Getting Ready to Leave!

We're in the final throes of preparations to leave. Our flight departs at 7:40 AM tomorrow. I'm glad that we had a few weeks to get our ducks in a row.

A few common questions we've received..

Q: How do you pack?
A: Very carefully. We have taken care to buy and pack clothes that are light and made of nylon or polypro, so we can wash things as we go along. I am bringing three pairs of polypro pants that zip off and convert to shorts, a few nylon tops (both short and long sleeve), and about ten days' worth of underwear. We're expecting more warmer weather than cold weather, so we brought some layers and are leaving our winter coats. The bottom line is that we will have to wash our clothes several times as we go along, so we've brought easy drying and layer-able clothes.

We're also bringing a first aid kit and some peripherals like headlamps, raincoats, Excedrin, prescriptions, etc. Suffice it to say our bags are stuffed to the brim.

Q: Why are you so busy? What kinds of things do you have to do to prepare?
A: There are a ton of things that go on in everyone's life over the course of a trip of our duration. We had to take care of all those things in advance, or transition them to someone else to take care of for us while we're gone. Not to mention all the stuff we had to do to directly prepare. Here are a few examples:

• Ensuring my health insurance from my former company is extended, that Gina is on it, and that it's paid for.
• Sweet-talking health insurance into overriding prescription refill limits (basically, we need a much longer supply than would normally be needed).
• Buy any supplies we didn't need (we are keeping REI in business).
• Little things like canceling our Netflix subscription.
• Visas - we needed visas in advance from Zambia and China. Thankfully services exist to get them for China, so we were able to avoid a trip to New York to get that. And with a major assist from my old friend Will in Washington DC, we were able to have our Zambia visas issued at their embassy there. All told, we spent about $700 on visas for these two countries.
• Compiling phone numbers for our credit cards and such, just in case they're stolen.

Itinerary Change
We decided to add in a side trip to Tasmania. We booked a flight to Hobart and we'll spend five days there. We also decided to hire a car in Australia and drive the whole way from Melbourne to Cairns, instead of taking the train.

So we are shoring up the final things and we're off tomorrow!

-- Bob