#1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
#2. Stephen King's "It"
#3. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
I actually had to think about these, because books don't pack well and space is at a premium (especially since I learned I packed wrong, more on that later). I picked It because, well, it's cheap and it's 1000 pages long. Don't get me wrong, It is the start of Stephen King's long slow spiral downwards, which ended with him crashing to Earth like a common commercial jetliner with the ending of "The Gunslinger". But it has a scary, scary clown and also has a scene where Swamp Thing rips off a 10 year old kid's head, so it's got some stuff going for it too. Being 1000 pages long is a plus, it'll take me awhile to burn through it.
I picked the last Harry Potter book because I haven't read it in over a year, it's the best one, and I have a soft spot for it because it's the one where Ron finally grows a pair and gives Hermione the Bad Touch. Good on you, old bean.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is probably the single greatest idea ever. The writer takes public domain books about boring nonsense like romance and class struggles, and inserts a bunch of random zombie mayhem. It's still the original book, which I've never read, but now there's the occasional scene where Catherine kills some ninja by ripping out their still-beating heart and eats it. So I'm like kind of culturing myself.
So about packing, yeah, I did it wrong. Two big, bulky items, my air mattress and tent, were gonna get bungeed to the top of my trunk bag. There's these bungees cords built into the top of it that you can slide stuff under. There's no good pictures of this thing on the 'net so I'm gonna have to do all of this with MS Paint.
That's like a top view of the bag. Those lines are the bungees. You can have things under them, like this.
Looks like a pretty solid setup, right? However my rear bag isn't waterproof. It has a rain cover that goes over it, for when it rains. I can't show this well in Paint without it being a big yellow rectangle, but it's just a yellow covering with elastic seams that slides over it.
The problem is that it fits pretty tightly, so the stuff can't go under it, and it covers the bungees. So now there's no way to attach them.
I could just use regular bungee cords, but then I also realized that the tent and air mattress (which CANNOT get wet or they'll grow mold) have covers, but they're not waterproof. So even then I'd be in trouble when it rained
So I might have to put some of those big items in my front panniers, which ARE waterproof, but then I obviously have less room for other stuff.
It's a little late in the game for serious packing problems like this, so I have to figure this out pretty quick. One idea is to just put both the tent and mattress in a big waterproof garbage bag before bungeeing them down, but that'd look pretty tacky and would probably vastly increase the chances of some random cop deciding I'm a homeless person.
Other than that, nothing much to report. The Surly is in the shop getting her one month checkup, so I'm back to the Trek. After this, I'm probably going to sell the old girl. I figured I could wait awhile to do it, but then I just realized this trip is only 2 fucking months away. TWO MONTHS!!
No comments:
Post a Comment