“Hey gringo! ‘want some more shit to carry?” Shouted the street vendor from across the street when I crossed the border between San Diego and Tijuana. This was in 1997. After finishing up six months of working in New Zealand, I was now traveling with all my gear through California and just entered Mexico. I had a backpack, a day-pack up front and was carrying a plastic bag in my hands… I knew the street vendor had me good, when he called me out on having so much crap to carry, it was an epiphany in my life. Over the next months of traveling through Baja and the mainland of Mexico I continued to shed most of the excess my belongings. I kept giving away shoes, shirts and other stuff. Stuff I just didn’t need. Eventually I was down to just a day-pack. As the weight of my luggage kept diminishing’s, so did my scope of worries. When eventually my wallet with everything was stolen in Honduras, I had literally nothing left to worry about.
That was the first time, and maybe the last time, I’ve ever felt completely free. Free of worldly possessions, free of worries, free of obligations.
This is 2015. Three pairs of skis with the telly set up, one AT set-up, two sets of matching ski-boots for the afore-mentioned, tandem paraglider, selfie stick and some camera gear does not include any clean underwear. It’s pretty amazing how I’ve managed to collect this amount of worldly possessions again.
