Roaming Rileys

Well, we’re down to 11 days before our short trip to Mexico begins. We will be flying out of JFK and into Mexico City and from there heading down to Puebla to stay with a friend. We don’t have a set itinerary which will be unusual for us, but should prove to be interesting. We will be in Puebla for several days and then heading down to Oaxaca for an additional 3 days.

In anticipation of the trip, I decided that I was not happy with using my PacSafe Daysafe 200 backpack as my day pack due to its size. Its a great bag, but when walking around in a downtown area I find it a little cumbersome. I typically carry around my Nikon and an additional telephoto lens and now that we don’t really ever purchase souvenirs or anything like that, we don’t really have a need to carry much else. Amy wasn’t too keen on losing the big pack just in case we did end up buying anything, but then again she’s not the one carrying it 😉

After some investigation I decided on getting the ‘Crumpler 5 million’ camera bag. My decision was based on 2 primary factors: 1 it doesn’t look like a camera bag, and 2 our local REI shop had them in stock so I was able to take my camera down and try it out. The camera fit perfectly and there’s enough room to store an additional item as long as its no larger than a tele-photo lens. Hopefully that’s enough, we shall see as we tour around.

I’m still bringing the Daysafe as my carryon and just putting the Crumpler inside with our other electronics. We are planning on heading over to Monte Alban and perhaps Tenochtitlan and will most likely bring the Daysafe over the Crumpler because we will want to carry water and perhaps other items.

As luck would have it, while we were at REI, we found an Osprey Meridien 70 liter pack on Clearance! We both have the 90 liter which we have been used on several European jaunts these past few years and love. They have very rugged wheels and the ability to unzip a compartment and turn them into comfortable backpacks. We felt the 90 liters were a bit large for a one week trip so this new 70 liter along with the Daysafe and Amy’s messenger bag, we should have more than enough room.

We’ll put our packing list up over the next few days.

Brian

Over the past few years both my wife and I have found our careers and comfortable middle class lives unfulfilling.  In our desperation and malaise, we discovered BootsNAll as well as a few blogs of other mid career individuals who took the plunge and left it all behind.We have been slowly planning and reading others blogs and have come up with a plan of our own. We are greatly dissatisfied with our careers and dread the thought of continuing to scramble up the corporate ladder for the next 30+ years. We spent a great deal of time examining our likes and dislikes, and decided that we would go back to graduate school in the hopes that we can someday teach.We’re about midway through the graduate program now, and have set our sights upon taking a gap year after graduation (2 years away). We have a lot of baggage that we will need to shed beforehand:

• house
• cars
• furniture
• other household furnishings

We’re hoping to be able to bankroll the trip from the proceeds from selling the above items, so here’s to hoping the economy turns around within the next 2 years!We won’t leave you bored though. We are taking trips to Mexico (Puebla and Oaxaca), France (Paris, Beuane, Provence, Riviera), and Germany (Munich) this year and will be posting about those adventures extensively.Perhaps we should be saving the money shelled out for those trips for the gap year, but 2 years is a long time to wait and wanderlust makes the waiting impossible ;-)We welcome your comments!