Gear Review – Four months on the road

Back in San Francisco! We’ve returned briefly for a few important events and are able to restock on gear and dump shit we don’t need. Being on the road for four months now, we have a good idea of what’s useful and what isn’t worth lugging around. Here’s how we broke it down:

Most useful items:

  1. Gregory backpacks – We are SO glad we chose the smaller sizes (50 L). These are more compact, making them easier to carry and allowing them to fit places others won’t, like on your lap or under a seat – no worrying about your shit getting jacked or falling off the roof of a bus.
  2. SteriPen – This water treatment device blasts water with ultraviolet light, killing all the disease causing critters inside. Combined with our Sigg bottles, this has saved us tons of money on bottled water and gives us piece of mind by not contributing to the plastic trash problems in many countries.

  3. Silk Sleep Sack – A clean, familiar, bedbug-free, night time experience, no matter what kind of rats nest you find yourself in.
  4. Wicking clothes – You stay cool in hot ass places , but surprisingly best of all, they are much easier to hand wash and dry. So what if you look like a douchebag in performance wear?
  5. Earplugs/sleep mask – ESSENTIAL.

Upgrades:

  1. Culturally versatile clothing – In many conservative places, wearing revealing clothing attracts a lot of unwanted male attention and is inappropriate. Kim is going for a more covered up look; TD will continue to wear his jean cutoffs (he likes the attention).
  2. Water tolerable shoes – Trekking for days on end with wet feet sucks, so ditching our non-waterproof hiking shoes was essential. I got a pair of aquatic shoes (mesh outer with trainable soles) which are super lightweight, pack small and are actually attractive enough to wear to the club. Kim upgraded to a pair with Gor-tex and is sticking to her Asics for formal occasions.

New Purchases:

  1. Hardcore mosquito repellent – We used all of ours and are getting tons to prepare for SE Asia.
  2. Mosquito net – After too many nights of getting eaten alive, this was a no-brainer. Mosquitoes love Kim, she is so sweet.

Stuff we didn’t use often/Stuff we ditched:

  1. Shoes – 95% of the time we rock sandals, yet we carry around unused shoes that take up ¼ of each pack. Stupid? Maybe, but sometimes you just need ’em for hiking or going out, so you suck it up. I did however ditch my two original pairs for a single pair to cover all occasion which are lightweight and pack small. (see above)
  2. Cotton clothes – After experiencing the superiority of wicking clothes, we ditched some of our cotton articles. See Wicking Clothes
  3. Revealing tops, short shorts – See Culturally Versatile Clothing
  4. Winter wear – Because of their bulkiness, we ditched Kim’s winter jacket and TD’s hoodie after Finland.
  5. Cutlery and Tupperware containers – The places we’re going have such cheap and delicious food that cooking yourself a pasta dinner would be criminal.

2 Comments