The contents of my suitcase

Just a post for posterity’s sake, blogged from Vancouver.   I haven’t quite made it home yet.

This has been the busiest two months in the history of my consultancy practice, travel wise.   For the last month, I have been living out of a suitcase, with my schedule consisting of a week on the road and one or two days at home for four weeks in a row.   My home has been an Eagle Creek Switchback Max 25 (which is an incredibly excellent bag, if I do say so myself), and it’s full of everything I need for my travelling facilitation and harvesting roadshow, including:

• Two pairs of “good” pants and a pair of jeans.
• Two “good” shirts and two t-shirts.
• Swim trunks/shorts, taekwondo pants and taekwondo shoes.
• Five pairs of socks
• Four 75g Higgins Brothers juggling balls
• A modified Generation tin whistle in D
• A box of Charters markers and some assorted Mr. Sketch pens
• 3 sets of Staetdler pens: 8 triplus fineliners, 20 triplus fineliners and 20 triplus colour
• Two Moleskines – a new one and an old one
• A copy of Stephen Karcher’s I Ching and my current read, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief (which I bought…)
• A deck of playing cards
• My laptop, cellphone, Canon Powershot A720, Olympus DS-2 voice recorder, Sansa 2GB mp3 player and an assortment of cables, connectors and a webcam.
• A plastic Nalgene water bottle (soon to be replaced by metal)
• A steel travel mug from Bad Ass Coffee in Maui.
• A tiny single steel travel espresso cup that always elicits “ahhhhhh…cuuuuute” comments from Asian baristas at airport espresso bars (it’s a phenomenon…)
• Glasses, toiletries, tea bags, wallet, passport, a file folder with border documentation and some ball point pens.

The whole thing is pretty manageable, and contains everything I need to work, exercise, play and amuse myself on long flights.   It all goes on my back when I am walking between the ferry and my home, which is a mile through forest and along rural roads, and it all rolls nicely along airport and hotel floors.   I have literally been living out of this bag for a month, at home and on the road, (with the exception of the three days the bag was in Korea) only changing around the clothes when I get home, switching dirty for clean.   All told, a tidy little set up, and a nice reminder of how little I actually need to work and live with.