Traveling equipment

I would think, if one is planning a trip around the world that involves flying from here to there and there is someone's house, a hostel, a cabin or the like that camping equipment could be pretty minimal - like sleeping bags, comfortable easy to wash clothes and a ditty bag. Oh I suppose one might take and extra pair of shoes. Or not. Put it all in a bag designed for airport, train station use and you've got it.

But no, the ever optimistic other says, "We might have to stay in somebody's backyard, a campground, or a park. What if we get there and there's no place to stay? We need a tent, and backpacks for hiking. For all of us. Oh and it won't all fit so we'll need a giant duffle too. You can carry that."

Uh huh. Did I mention I had a laminectomy when I was quite a bit younger? Carrying a back pack any distance is not in the cards. So we go off to REI to check out what's available.

If one were to take a tent, I'd proabably take the REI half dome 4. Only 2 poles, 8.5lbs, 7x8' floor. Big enough for sure, easy to assemble in the afore-mentioned park, (after dark in the rain with whining children). But I still don't think we need it.

Packs. Well the hiking packs seem to run about 4000 cu. in. and have straps and hardware sticking out everywhere. How geek! How likely to get destroyed in an airport. How unlikley to be carried willingly by said children. So we shed the uninformed sales person and go walkabout. Oh, lookit this. Eagle Creek Switchback wheeled pack. It's 22", qualifying as carry on (I think - anybody know what fits on international flights not involving the US?), has pockets, hidden suspension straps and lo, wheels. The kids had a ball wheeling them around the store, and might even be persuaded to carry them sometimes. Oh they're on sale this week. For the big guy (who gets all the overflow) , there's the cross country duffel, also by Eagle Creek. There were others, notably the REI Wheelybeast, but I liked the simple handle and carrying straps and skate wheels on the former.

We didn't get time to look at sleeping bags, but I'm inclined to think nothing beats the stuffability of down. They won't have to be winter bags, so we won't leave too many geese shivering featherless in the cold.

Other accoutrements include a camera (of course there'll be pictures here!) and a laptop computer. (What I do for a living.) Since we have to take a computer anyway, and will always be on the prowl for internet cafe's, I think we'll use sipphone for communications. We'll have one number to reach us, it's got voice mail and it's really cheap. Oh, and no extra gear beyond the laptop is required, although a head set improves the sound vastly. It's my impression that a world style GSM phone would still be expensive because we'd either use it as a single foreign base phone and pay high minute charges or change carriers every country and pay high carrier charges for the short contracts. Anybody have an opinion on that?

The camera. It should allow both portrait and decent scenic shots. It must be light, easy to use, and withstand some abuse. I don't need 6mega pixels to make a good image if I frame it right before I pull the trigger, so figure 3M pixels. That's nice. Theres about a dozen like that in the $150 range, what'll I do? Turns out there are 2 'ruggedized' cameras more or less in the range, the Olympus Stylus 300 and the Pentax Optio 33 WR. I really like the design of the Pentax with no moving external parts, and nice thin body. 2 Standard AA batteries is a good idea when you might not be able to charge up for a few days. The SD (or MMC) memory is significantly cheaper than the xD stuff the Olympus uses too. I should mention the Canon A75 as a runner up. Probably would take better pictures, but it wasn't water resistant, and weighs almost twice as much (because it needs 4 AA batteries). The only problem with the Pentax is how much it cost. Also it's not particularly popular, so there aren't many on ebay (where most of our stuff comes from). Flash! Yesterday 2 of them showed up. I'm aiming to score one, so get outta my way.

The laptop. Nothing special, but I already have it so the price on the the old Dell 4000 is right. I'll have to upgrade to a CD burner for backups, and probably buy an extra battery. (Ugh, more weight to lug around.)

Well whadda think me buckos? Can we get all this gear into 3 carry-on's and an giant duffel?
Keep those cards and letters coming. We need all the advice we can get :-)

-robertw