Underway at Last (well almost)

After over 18 months of planning and waiting, you reach a stage where you just want the thing to finally start. I suppose it's a bit like waiting for the birth of a baby - maybe not as painful, but twice the gestation period.

Sitting upstairs in the family room, I am confronted by a sea of partly packed luggage strewn from one wall to the other. Even after doing a large number of similar trips it is still hard to always know exactly what items to take and what to leave at home. While some take pride in having the smallest and lightest bag in the airport, I can personally see no point in being so frugal with your packing that you make yourself uncomfortable by trying to complete the entire trip with only a toothbrush and one spare pair of underpants.

I have to admit being something of a technophile. That means that about half of my luggage always consists of adaptors, chargers, cables, cameras and the like. By the time I add my notebook computer and all the cycling gear, there is no way that it is going to weigh anything less than 18 kg or so.

Part of the problem is that we do not know exactly what type of weather we will encounter in the Baltics. Although we will be there in the "summer" time, I have learnt that the definition of summer can vary greatly from place to place. On our previous rides in Finland and Sweden, we froze under overcast skies for most of the time we were there.

There may be an old adage "when in doubt, leave it out", but I have modified it to a much more intelligent version - "when it doubt, toss it in". No point in suffering unnecessarily.
As long as the zipper can still shut, I feel there is no problem. It makes sense to me.

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