What to bring for three months of adventure?

April, 2024

What does one bring for three months of adventuring across the entire European continent (and a bit of the North American continent, thank you Greenland and parts-of-Iceland!)?

Well… one checked bag, one backpack, and a small satchel.

At least, if you’re me.


We’ll start out with a fashion show of what I’ll be wearing on my adventures. Note that the eyemask and bunny ears didn’t end up coming with me.

Once the clothes were picked out, the rest was a process of figuring out what could fit where, and how much I could fit in the first place.

Laptop, kindle, phone, passports, those are all obvious things. Notebook, contacts things, those as well. But what else should I bring? What other activities, and what could go wrong during the adventures, that I should bring contingencies for?

I settled on a good list, reviewed it a few times, and then finally laid everything out and did a trial run. It worked surprisingly well – turns out, I may have been backpacking a lot recently, and I do believe I’ve gotten pretty good at this whole thing.

(Note that my wallet and passports don’t show up on this photo… If you’re curious where those get packed, shoot me a message. It’s a secret to everybody!)

The process of leaving – Part 9

April, 2024

Closing out the store is almost like a ritual. Shut off the lights, shut down the equipment, sweep the floors and clean the counters, and lock the doors.

Closing out my apartment was a bit less of a ritual, but it felt a bit more somber.


I took it slow and steady, as I’ve done with pretty much everything else in preparation for this trip. I packed my things. I cleaned as I went. The international movers came, and took my most important things with them. My friend and I rented a uHaul, and took everything that I was going to sell out from the apartment. I brought the remaining middle-ground things to the storage unit. Lastly, the disposal folks came by and we threw out everything remaining.

I went through each utility, line by line. I called, cancelled, and told them that I was moving internationally and wouldn’t be able to transfer service. It went smoothly, and kept me busy enough that (for the most part) I was able to focus on the tasks at hand.

It was emotional in between the tasks.

I’ve mentioned, but seeing my home turn into a generic apartment was really tough on me. The photos coming down was the hardest part, and lasted the longest, but that didn’t mean the rest were any easier. I rode the emotions as best I could, keeping my to-do list in mind and making sure to grind through it as best I could… while liberally reaching out to friends and family when I started to sink into deep sadness.

Friends and family helped a lot – when going through emotionally tumultuous times, I absolutely reach out to the life rafts around me.

What else to say about this?

I cancelled the utilities one by one. I worked with the apartment management company to ensure everything went smoothly, thanking everyone profusely for the amazing home they’d helped me maintain for these 3 years and 11 months. I was friendly and grateful, and in turn they helped me make sure everything went smoothly… and even helped me ensure I didn’t get caught in a few common traps that they knew people oft-times would.

I’m sure I missed one or two things, but I’m cautiously optimistic that they won’t be too challenging to fix on the road. Time will tell, but I can cleanly say that I felt a strong wave of closure and loss when I locked that door and gave away the key for the last time… but that sadness was strongly flavored with optimism and hope for the next grand adventure.

Packing my life into boxes

April, 2024

This sort of fits into my “The process of leaving” posts… but it feels different enough that I’m keeping it separate. It’s not really a discussion about moving, since I’ve very much talked through that part already, but it’s more of a quick opportunity to show the glimpse of what professional international movers do.

Eduardo and Antonio, with something like 20 years experience packing each, banged this whole thing out in just under four hours.

Now, keep in mind, I wasn’t allowed to pack anything myself, legally. Since the shipping company is doing the customs forms, they’re required to see everything that goes into the box – and so while I was allowed to put things into some boxes, those boxes had to be opened for a quick inspection before they got wrapped up and marked down.

It went exceptionally quickly, though there was a bit of a kerfuffle with exactly how much stuff I had… Starting with:
– “Ohh, you have so little stuff! It’ll only take up half the box!”
– “Hmm. You actually have a lot of stuff. You’re going to have to leave about half of it behind.”
– “Wait, hold on, we can tetris this… okay! Everything fits except the guitar!”

It was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

I held strong, and just kind of let the anxiety waves crash around me while letting the guys do their thing.