The Inventory

After checking into a really new albergue here in Burgos, I panicked. Where the hell did I put my passport? I tore apart my backpack violently, until I found it in the last place I looked. In any case, with everything out of my backpack, and because of a question someone emailed me, I decided I would share my personal inventory with you! So here goes…

• Backpack: Arched support system so that it doesn’t rest against my back, two front small pockets and one large pocket, with a separate section for a…
• Camelback Waterbottle: Sits in my backpack and the tube/mouth thingy comes out of a well-designed hole in the backpack to wrap around to sit by my neck for whenever I need water.
• Camera with back-up memory card and charger
• MacBook Laptop in Duke Laptop case (you know, the one that almost every Duke student has) and charger
• iPod Touch and charging cable
• Universal Converter: purchased really cheap at Target before I left
• Travel Size Everything: Toothbrush, Toothpaste, Hand Lotion, Body Wash (Old Spice Endurance Odor Blocking…which is necessary), Deodorant (Old Spice Endurance Odor Blocking…which is really necessary), Tissues, Antibacterial Hand Soap, Fusion Razor, Extra Razor Blade Cartridges, Laundry Detergent in Dry Sheet Form (super cool)
• Loreal SPF 50 Sunblock: Bought here in Spain at the price gouging price of 15.95 Euros! Did you know that I can sleep and eat for at least a day on that sort of money?
• Prescription Allergy Medication
• Wallet
• Passport (luckily)
• Pilgrim’s Passport, or La Credencial (del Peregrino)
• Tiny Swiss Army Knife: really it hasn’t served a real purpose beyond, well, blister care…knife to pop the blister, scissors to cut off the dead skin, tweezers to pull out little pieces of sock fabric that tend to get stuck, nail file to file away at the hardened dead skin on the old blisters, and a toothpick to…well, to be a toothpick? I bet this really isn’t what the Swiss Army intended soldiers to do with their knives. Also, this thing is in need of some SERIOUS sanitizing if it will ever serve another purpose in its life…
• Poncho: has been completely useless, so far…knock on wood (on that note, we discovered in Roncesvalle that while Holland, South Africa, the United States, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Germany all consider Friday the Thirteenth to be unlucky, Spain considers Tuesday the Thirteenth to be the unlucky day for the Thirteenth of any month to occur. Also, you must continually knock on wood on that Tuesday to be protected from the bad luck).
• Waterproof Laundry Bag: it’s not used for laundry but instead it keeps everything dry in my backpack in case water comes into my backpack (knock on wood). So inside of it is usually my computer, and…
• Legal pad and 8 pens
• American Way magazine, stolen from the flight to Paris (I still need to finish those Sudokus and that Crossword Puzzle…)
• The Alchemist: I’ve read it once already in the past week, but I’m going to read it again and then write about some of it…more to come on that front.
• Slaughterhouse Five: Could I really ever travel without one of my favorite books ever? No, I think if I ever traveled without it, a piece of my soul would die. So it goes.
• Three black medium Hanes Crew-Cut Shirts
• One pair of khaki cargo shorts (and, for those of you managers reading this, those are khaki-colored khaki shorts…)
• One pair of gray cotton drawstring shorts
• Four pairs of black Hanes medium socks, ankle-length
• One awesome pair of awesomely-new shoes: if they weren’t so awesomely-new when I started, I wouldn’t have had all these pretty blisters! Aren’t I so intelligent for not breaking them in ahead of time?
• Four pairs of Hanes Medium Boxer Briefs: because, admit it, you were curious if I was boxers or briefs.
• Band-aids and Athletic Tape: purchased at local farmacias for very cheap prices (40 assorted off-brand band-aids for 2 Euros? En serio? Es un robo!)

And there you have it. The others estimate that it’s about the same number of total kilos that everyone else is carrying. Now if only I knew what the conversion was for a kilo…

(Tomorrow we climb the plateau and enter La Meseta, and I’m excited for the serenity of the barren, desert section of this Road. Until next time!)