Packing Up

Well, I'm shipping my stuff. It's hard to pack and organize yourself for 9 weeks and with a 60lbs weight limit. But as I was stressing out I made a few great decisions. At least they feel this way now...maybe on the trip they won't turn out to be so great.
First, after much debate, I invested in a waterproof hockey bag on wheels. It is bright orange. The advantages of this are
1- All my stuff fit into one bag, clothes, camp gear and bike gear
2-There is a good chance that most of the gear bags will be in the black, green blue range so I should be able to pick mine out fairly quickly when it is loaded and unloaded. Hey, if there are other riders reading this and decide that picking a bright colour is a good idea...fine but ORANGE is already taken!
3- The wheels make it easy to handle.
Also, How do I decide what to take? Easy, why stress? They published a list on the cyclist information so I just used that. I packed exactly to the list, it all fit in my bag and met the weight limit. It looks like this

Now if it turns out there is something I need and I don't have it, I can say- "It wasn't on the list"
So the Opas, John and Ralph, and I got together, in the rain, on Tuesday

and turned 3 perfectly good bikes into complicated puzzles.
Before:
During:

Hey! Be careful with those streamers! Don't bend them!
After:


We loaded up John's van and he headed to Grand Rapids today. I haven't received a call to bail him out at the border yet so I think all has went well.
I'm back on the Schwinn for the next week. It feels very clunky compared to the Black Pearl and I can't believe I actually thought it was a good choice to do Sea To Sea on. I know, I know...Everyone told me so!