Weigh-it

More really good ideas: buy a shit tent. Thanks, D--.

[No, seriously, I'm not going to use it much, so I want something light that won't matter when I dump it as too much baggage, cos it's deteriorating at a rate of a zillion knots per picasecond anyway.]

So off I went to Decathlon, to find out what the lightest tent in the world is.

I found the fastest tent in the world - two seconds to put up. Doesn't even sound that impressive till you realise that those two seconds are spent hurling the thing into the air - it goes into space a flat round heavy lump, and by the time it lands is a fully formed three person tent. If you're going to carry a tent to and from your car and use it to puke in at festivals, it's the best buy ever. Plus, is that not a crowd pleaser? I am camper see me hurl.

£80 for 980g of floor snail style tent, and the no cost extra of the charming smile of Piedad, the helpfullest pixie assistant in Rotherhithe.

This made me worry about What Things Weigh.

A kilo for some walking boots? A kilo for a backpack? Another kilo for a tent? (hammer not included) Another again for a sleeping bag?
That's four kilogrammes of backbreaking toil before I add in my extensive Snoopy-logo knicker collection.

Whimper.

f-- has written frequent emails exhorting me to take one item of clothing and copious quantities of string with me - all else is unnecessary. (Apart from a £50 sunhat.)
This is stretching the bounds of likely, so she's going to drag me round the shops next week and see to it that I purchase the damn string.

How's that going to help me when I'm afraid of bears in the Hawaiian state national parks?

Mistakes

I'm finally gaining some sense of urgency (six weeks and two days to go), and doing something every day. Which makes for more frequent posting here, I suppose. Sorry about that.

Today I worried, very inconsequentially, about jet lag. Not the jabs I need, the personal banker I need to see, the horrendously low IQ that made me book the MOT I need to sell my car on a bank holiday, not the emergency dentist appointment I need so that one of these days I can actually eat again without having to numb the worstearthshakingagonyIeverfelt (tm) with alcohol rubs (what, rubbing your liver doesn't count?) ... so today, I booked a youth hostel dorm for every night just after a really majorly draining long flight.

Bear in mind that I live in Europe. Thusly, I think forty minutes is a long way to go to get to another country.

Think also about that starvation level insomnia exaggerated rage obscured low IQ.

Yes, I forgot all the time zones.

I mean really, is it so unreasonable to expect that if you set off at X, then a four hour flight to Y will get you there within the same day?

Noooooooooooo. I arrive two days later. In one instance, a day earlier.

I added them up. Overall, I lose three days.

Where do they go?

So now I have to telephone Auckland from work, making me even more popular than when I forgot to turn up this morning, change all my reservations. The reservations that really didn't need doing till late June.

One thing mainly useful, at least. If by any chance you're planning some travelling too. This.

the gap - value versus what it cost

I've been trying to work out some average costs per day.

I recall some time ago, Jen emailing me to suggest a daily budget of $45USD.
I was shocked to the holes in my socks, and calculated a quick run through of my current daily budget, living relatively cheaply in London.

$63 a day.

I don't want to grind my experiences into a distillation of misery like I have done when truly short of food on journeys past (one square of cooking chocolate, every two days, alternating with a single glass of raki ... brrr).
But I also don't want to end up not catching the Trans Siberian Express in Autumn 2008 merely because I lived like a hog in the first month or so of what is only a starting point on the much much longer journey. So here's middling-cheap rates, based on what I could find online.

Hawaii: $65
NZ (middle of winter): $60
Rarotonga: $100
Fiji: $50
Singapore: $60
Malaysia: $45
Indonesia: $55
Thailand: $30
Vietnam: $50
Nepal (middle of snowy season): $55
India (middle of monsoon): $18
London: $90

Looks like I need to buy a tent.

Rules of the Road

guidebooks,
originally uploaded by digitalia.

Dear God, I cannot read this lot. All on loan. Mostly unopened. Mostly out of date.
I need a Doctor Who style brainhole for immediate upload. No, not THAT sort of upload.

Would it be SO bad if I didn't read a single guidebook?

Riiiide the Tsunami

While trying to weather toothache so strong that it actively messes with my vision, I find I tend to assume I'm projecting a meaning that hasn't really been written into the page before me.
Reading about conditions in Moloka'i (one of the least touristed islands I can find in Hawaii), I came across How To Recognise: A Flash Flood:

rise in stream level, and in speed of flow;
distant rumbling;
smell of fresh earth.

So far, so good. Logical, clear. Almost evocative, in fact.

Read a little further, and there's How To Recognise: A Tsunami:

The State of Hawaii has developed a warning system to advise the public if a tsunami is coming.
NEVER GO DOWN TO THE SHORE to watch for a tsunami.
If you can see the wave, you are too close to escape it.
Never try to surf a tsunami; tsunami’s do not curl or break like surfing waves.

Now, I may be green, but if you're going to try to surf a tsunami, surely your death is a mere evolutionary footnote?

Advice was sought, and advice did come...

Starting to get things done. Not a moment too soon.

S-- came up with a brilliant idea at the eleventh hour. Why not book travel insurance through the union I've paid £90 a month to for the last ten years? So I checked Endsleigh's site, and two years' insurance will cost me £14 more than two years single trip nonsense from Trailfinders. That fourteen pounds will allow me to go wherever I like with whomever I like, whereas the 'single trip' euphemism really solidly limits the ways I can get around N and S America next year. The coverage is pretty similar, but Endsleigh has the edge, with massive medical insurance thrashing Trailfinder's already pretty strong £5million, and valid worldwide all the way through. (£900 for two years, if Jen wants to know.)

Sal suggested joining Star Alliance's frequent flyer program - brilliant advice. Star Alliance runs all the airlines behind the RTW scheme I'm using for the first six months, and you only need join one airline's programme to be able to credit airmiles from any of the star alliance companies.
The mileage threshold to get real benefits seems to be around 10-15,000 miles, and as I'm doing 34,000 by next January, I should be able to winkle in a free flight to Australia to lighten the burden of an ill advised two week stopover in midwinter Auckland, slap bang in the middle of a largely equatorial journey.
Thus, I'm a proud member of the Thai Airlines Royal Orchid Plus frequent flyers' programme. I was going to go for Air New Zealand, but they're dickheads - they want me to snail mail my airline tickets to Christchurch for validation before I go, and to add on NZ$50 surcharge.
I've no idea how much that is, but I'm fairly bloody certain I'm not paying it.

Singapore Airlines wanted my passport number, which defied my foggy memory. So Thai it is.
Proper budget stuff, too - print out an image of your membership card and write your name on it? Classy.

Of course, I did. And I'm going to get the damn thing laminated. Tacky? Moi?

While sparing a few hours in his hectic expat schedule, A-- reminded me that S-- M-- M--, old pal, lives in Singapore now, and promised to send me his details. He would be brilliant fun, if that works out. I can once more laugh at his nostrils flaring in restaurants while he tries to con me into eating chicken feet.

And, I've been begging bloggers to let me have lunch with them, to stave off feelings of complete invisibility. So far, several foolish types have agreed. Result! Wiffle in Singapore, Jan in EASTCanada, Jen in WEST Canada, and Jenalso will drive down to meet me in Charleston or Savannah.
[Edit: and another fool agrees: Frogstar, in NZ!]
I'm going to be facelessly wandering transport hubs amongst total strangers for months at a time, so any degree of familiarity of face / writing will be richly richly needed.

Things are moving, finafuckingly, and only in one case too fast: hugely painful freak-tooth moving inside my jaw, causing the roots of another tooth to move and gradually splay then shatter, I presume, which hurts about as much as you'd imagine it would. Need a decent dentist, and fast*. I have one good recommendation, but they seem to have moved. Beginning to wonder, with this massive medical cover, what's the best country to have a dodgy jaw operation in? I'd be surprised if it were the UK.
* Done. Thanks, D--.

Invalidate

The damn insurance.

Two weeks ago, a voicemail warned me that I'd forgotten I was going to America. I rang back, asked if I could simply have insufficient coverage for those simple two weeks of the trip.

No. That would invalidate the whole insurance. Turns out the problem is, they *know* that I would be underinsured for two weeks, and that leaves a gaping hole in their terms.

I rang back, asked if I could have 'area 3' ('world minus north america'; sounds like a Guardian headline, somehow) for the whole time, plus another policy for that fortnight; so I take out the hyped up price for the time I'm in the country with the hyped up hospitals.

They don't have the authority to do that.
I asked, gently, did they mean that one particular member of staff didn't have the authority to do that, or did that mean I wouldn't find any such arrangement from Trailfinders, ever?

The latter. No. Six months inflated price or nothing.

I pointed out that from March till September 2006, I'd be travelling through north America repeatedly, and would be requiring both flights and insurance for same. If I have to get six months pointlessly expensive insurance, then wouldn't it be cheaper to get fourteen months of it, than go back again?

No. This is 'single trip' insurance. Single trip insurance that covers all eight of the trips that count as single trip, but not the other ninth one, no. No. That would count as two trips. Two trips is 'multiple'. (has to be a man who said that)

This is getting silly.

Be clear how silly.

The extra is about fifty pounds.
I spent seventy pounds on champagne last night for friends who neither thanked nor noticed. I've been quibbling for one month about fifty pounds.

Attack of the fifty foot wobblies

I was rooted to the spot by fear and disappointment. By things I've failed to plan or arrange, or do. By things I suddenly knew would go wrong. By the calamities and horrors and plain old fasioned dangers of the journey ahead.
Frozen.

The only cure: leech off the excitement of others.

Because my itinerary was formed only by the question: "where were you happiest? Where do you wish you could be again?" I'm going to many places I'd never heard of, thought little of, never intended or hoped to visit.
Apart from their foreignness, there's no mental image held inside of what Bangkok will be like, why people visit Mumbai, what one is supposed to be excited over in Singapore. I know nothing of these places.

So the wisest cure I could think of was to go and ask people to recharge my impulse journey with a pop cultural implant.

Thank you to N-- and K-- for showing me the photos of the buddhist trails of India.
Thank you to Sal for talking me through stacks of photographs far removed from the path in Ecuador.
Thank you to Waterhot for enthusing at lunch about Bangkok and Singapore.

And for a mildly sarcastic remark that helped eliminate the tincture of last night's fears: "oh yeah, I can just see you now: returning in six months with your tail between your legs. Sure"

Voices

J-- writes to me saying that nine weeks will pass in no time, it'll be simple, I'll soon be gone.

C-- assures me there's little to do to pack up everything I own in a few short afternoons; she'll help me, will do some of it while I'm working. Why don't I merely sell everything I own? It'll be easy.

D-- encourages me to change flight plans to chase the sun and the fun, warns me that I need to consider safety as a quantity unknowable by European standards.

R-- insists I visit him before I leave, points out that flights to Germany are cheap and plentiful, and I have tons of cash now.

Colleagues at work have stopped with the fawning, and delve into sarcasm. "You'll be back here before you know it. Oh yes. You're not leaving. You'll be back."

J-- isn't paralysed by fear and lack of sleep. C-- doesn't even know where I live. A flight to R--'s will take me ten hours for just one night unless I pay top dollar. And I have other, more elastic things to spend top dollar on. My colleagues know full well that such cynicism forms the driving need for me to leave.
I've twice lost everything I ever owned already, and feel a faint soul tremble at the idea of volunteering to dislocate myself from things which root me all over again. D-- assumes I've a cast iron itinerary formed by guidebooks that locks me into the Great White Tourist. I haven't. Actually I've booked five flights, mostly a month apart, with no idea why these places are worth going to, or what I'm going to do there.

There's a gap of knowledge, here, but that's not it. They're not leaving so it's not their gap.

It's a dislocation between my not knowing how to talk about it, and your assuming that what you think it feels like is true.

I Forgot

Damn insurance. I forgot stop 1 - Hawaii - is part of the US. So now the insurers want to charge me seven months US rate insurance. Fuckers.

In other news, I opened three years worth of mail; £3k of cheques (outdated), and two CCJs. Blegh.

The best thing has been getting a Sound Walk CD from K and N - an audio guide to Varanasi, India. Delicious way of visualising yourself into the future. Stunning.
Bloody calming and atmospheric medita-amuser on a three hour drive to pick up a borrowed laptop from S.

And I opened a TravelPod. Hm. Looking at it when sober, I think possibly not.

Rotating Nicely

Nothing to report. I booked 7 months of non-north american insurance for about £260. Dearer than the cheapest, better cover than the cheapest, also.

Once I'm back in London booking up the subsequent year's journey, I can add on insurance to cover North America ...

(second journey is through Canadian lakes and rivers, down the Missouri, down the Mississippi, then a flourish of air travel around Mexico, Cuba, Bermuda, and back to Chattanooga and Charleston. I may or may not add on NYC if I change my mind about the course at Columbia.
Then over the strait to Venezuala, to see the much famed Merida, fly to Ecuador to see the much famed Vilcabamba, then overland all the way down the mountain range till I hit the bottom of South America, back up to Iguacu and Buenos Aires, then one last burst of Amazon exploration in Recife /Belem)

... and then go back to the cheaper rates of 'Not North American Insurance' as soon as I leave.

But the only real news is ... it's Friday.

Ten weeks to go. Ten weeks.

Five god damn minutes

If I could damn well have a day where I had five god damn minutes to do anything other than unpaid overtime, I could maybe hit some of these targets.

Thirty minutes with a computer a day, and I have to do everything right there, right then. What do you mean, you've only just done that sliver of it? What have you been doing?

So: thanks to Jen and Sal for commenting with useful ideas and advice. I wish I had more than five minutes, then I could actually read what you'd said.

< grinds knuckles into bunches and slices bits off teeth >

Tedium

Insurance policies are so damn boring.

Racking up the cost just because North America and Australia have any decent healthcare is even more tedious.

I'm three days overdue on making a decision about duration of policy, coverage, geographical limits, and so on and so forth until my head smashes flat into the damn keyboard, and I'm pretty much ready to buy any damn policy as long as they don't bother me with any of this utter rubbish any longer.

I haven't yet signed off on the lease for my flat, either.

I think about all the bloody boxes I just spent a year fighting to get back, that are unopened behind the sofa, and the whole thing feels impossible.

Inevitable feelings of impossible. Also tedious.

Discouraged? Moi?

The cheque I nearly threw away from the Inland Revenue, refunding me the exact cost of the next seven airfares plus all my travel insurance?

It's out of date.

Have to send the filthy lucre back to the tax office, and hope they manage to reissue a replacement within the eleven weeks I have left in this country.

(Eleven weeks. Eleven fucking weeks!)