The journey begins, gear vrs clothes

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Today is the day. I'm up at oh-dark 30 (after less than 2 hours sleep) and pick up Greg at his house. We need my truck to get to the airport. I travel a good bit for business and I pride myself on never checking luggage. When I'm going somewhere for work I hate to wait at check-in and baggage claim is a nightmare. Between Greg and I we checked 6 bags for this trip. One of the bags belongs to Larry. He's flying down tomorrow and has only about an hour after he arrives in Lima to make his connecting flight to Chiclayo. He's only bringing carry-on luggage so he can get through customs and immigration quickly. I have 12 soccer balls (sorry, futbols), a huge bag of candy and 8 frisbee knock offs in one bag and a projector 1/2 of my clothes and a big bag of beanie babies in my other suitcase. Apparently Beabie Babbies are a big hit in the jungle. My electronic gear (laptop, iPad, iPod, camera, Bose headphones, BlackBerry, and misc chargers) is in my backpack with the other half of my clothes. My first trip to Peru 6 or 7 years ago, I made the mistake of not having any clothes in my carry-on (stupid, I know). A group of 20 of us were going to visit the mission station and build a church in one of the villages up-stream. I was flying down the day before and my bags didn't make my connecting flight. We were moving so fast (kind of like this trip) it was a week before my clothes caught up with me. You only make that mistake once. My electronic gear cracks me up. Two weeks worth of clothes weigh less than 5 lbs (thank you REI!) but my electronic gear is better than 20 lbs. Technically a third of that is Greg's projector but I am the keeper of the gear. You're probably wondering about the projector. It's actually going to be my favorite part of the trip. When Larry and Addie first went to the jungle 46 years ago, the Mission Station was near the village of Chipe. I think they were there for about 20 more years before they moved it up river about an hour and a half (depending on your boat). Anyway, all the kids basically grew up near Chipe. Larry took about 500 old photos and digitized them and we are going to have "home movie" night in the jungle using PowerPoint, the projector, a big sheet, and a generator. Greg thinks we could have more than 500 people show up for that. We did something similar my first trip to the jungle and it was something to see the looks on the folks as they saw pictures of family and friends (and themselves) from "way back when." We take all those old photos for granted but most of the people in these villages have no way to see back except for their memory.
Greg and I are sitting in the Admiral's Club in Miami. We've got another two hours before our flight to Lima. Almost in Peru.

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Photos

Clothes for 2 weeks
I pack light!

Gear for 2 weeks
Seriously, an iPad and and iPod? In the jungle?

Comments

[Leslie]

I'd like to be in Chipe for that one!! When we first showed these people pictures / videos of themselves, it was the firs time they had ever seen themselves in that medium! So cool! Remind Greg to NOT SHAVE!!!!! Love you guys -