Despite our back packer ways, we haven’t actually bought any bags for our trip to Europe. Now, we’re looking for new gear to bring with us specifically for this trip.
Our last vacation in Cambodia, we brought my old bag and shared space. I had brought it to Europe before, but it’s more of a suitcase that happens to have back pack straps than an actual bag practically speaking. The old bag had rollers for airports, but the heavy supports for an extending handle caused it to be cumbersome for extended trips. It tried to be two things, yet failed at both, because the handle was long enough to be tugged around, but short enough to cause me to smack the back of my foot when I walked. It much too heavy to carry comfortably on my back for long too.
We need new bags. We went to an outdoors store I had found earlier in the week. I had done my best to try to explain the requirements of our trip to the owner on a previous trip. The gentleman at the store pointed me to some quality bags. Excellent, and very expensive, as they are all foreign made European bags shipped into Korea.
We looked around the store. The owner recommended some shoes, but nothing was in my size. I don’t have excessively large feet for someone my height. I’m just outside the Korean bell curve. Clerks usually gasp when I tell them my shoe size and shake their heads. Oh well, I’ll find something eventually if we go to Seoul.
We also need rain jackets and other “supplies” for our trip. The jacket prices were incredibly high! I had no idea a good jacket would cost that much. In total, if we went “top end” and bought everything we were looking at, we would have spent as much on gear as the plane tickets to get to Europe in the first place!
Eventually we’ll end up going to Seoul to see the mountaineering and travel gear neighborhood’s prices. I’ll probably be able to find the right shoes too. Then we can haul everything back to Daejeon as our first test of readiness for the trip. I’m terribly excited to buy all our gear. It’s only when the bags are sitting ready to be packed that I get serious about traveling.
