Getting Ready Part One

Generally speaking, preparations of some sort have to be made before any journey can begin. In my case, that to date has involved getting rid of practically everything I own - selling my cd collection, giving furniture away to my neighbors, putting books on the street for people to pick up (San Francisco is notorious for the practice of putting things on the sidewalk for any and all takers - refined dumpster diving, you could say.) I'm only saving a small box of things that a friend will ship to me when I get settled in Portland - things have a habit of collecting without much effort, so I'm sure I'll be up to my neck in stuff again before I know it. And frankly it feels good to be free of the yoke of possessions - they can weigh you down without you're even realizing it, i.e. how can I move I have so much stuff, who is going to watch my stuff while I'm away, I have to move into a bigger place I have so much stuff. Stuff it, I say.

I've been biking more lately, trying to get my body ready for the work to come. I don't want to shock myself with 40-50 mile bike rides day in and day out, so I've been riding a couple of times a week, 40 miles here, 15 miles there, 30 miles somewhere else. I've only ridden my bike, without the travel trailer I recently purchased attached; I'll take the bike with an empty trailer out for a few rides this week. I need to first adapt to the feeling of turning, braking, starting and stopping with an empty trailer in tow, then I need to practice doing all of that with a trailer that's loaded down with my life for the next four or five months. I'll be hauling a tent, sleeping bag, my clothes, my food, water, everything I need to live will be behind me in a trailer 2 1/2 feet long and 1 1/2 feet wide. The idea became a daunting reality when the trailer was delivered to my doorstep; it came in a box and I had to put it together myself. When I was done, I looked at the finished trailer and the pile of my gear next to it and started to sweat - how was I going to fit all of this into such a tiny little space? Am I crazy? I should probably just buy a plane ticket and forget this foolishness.

After taking a few deep breaths and looking everything over again, I started to assess what it was that I really needed, and what I could do without. Tent, check. Tent extension for a condo like camping experience, no. Sleeping bag, check. Foam pad for premium sleeping conditions, no. Flashlight, check. Huge lantern with 4 D batteries for daylight at anytime of night, no. And so on and so forth until I think I've cut back to the bare essentials - I'm not bringing much in the way of food, for instance, and what I do buy is probably not going to require much cooking, eliminating the need for any type of cook stove and limiting the cookware I need to a very basic set. I plan to buy whatever food I need as I go, and am probably going to eat straight out of a can fairly regularly (canned ravioli here I come!) Maybe I should just trade my cookware for a can opener, hmmm. At any rate, I'm still making gear changes where I think I need to or have to out of weight consideration.

Next post: Getting Ready, Part Two: Me gusta el montar en bicicleta!