Friday 13 December 2013

Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous



“Are not the rich and the poor brothers?” asked the young King.
“Aye,” answered the man, “and the name of the rich brother is Cain.”
Oscar Wilde


Wealth is a difficult subject for us to talk about; as a result we often tip-toe around the issue and nothing changes. Money is personal and none of anyone else's business in our culture. But that's the thing about community, it's all about being in each other's business. It's implicit in and necessary to the definition. It is the wonderful, horrible thing about Christianity: freedom to be a servant to a better master than before. One servant among many. Which means three very difficult things: the money isn't ours, our business is everyone's business and we aren't supposed to call the shots.

The Money Problem

If you have a roof over your head, something edible in your kitchen, and any money left over, you are in the top 8% of the world’s wealthiest people (State of the Village). Chances are, if you are reading this, you are among that 8%. I live in Canada in an unheated apartment, wash laundry by hand in the sink, and my vehicle is an old bicycle, yet I am richer in wealth and resources than 92% of the global community. That is astounding.

It should make us stop and think for a moment about what we expect life to bring us. Growing up in an upper middle class suburb, it was assumed that we would all get good jobs, buy houses, grow fat, buy diet programs, vacation in the Dominican, and in general follow in the footsteps of our parents’ generation. That lifestyle was never sustainable. It is not today, it will not be tomorrow. I like laying on the beach as much as the next person, but is it fair to expect all of that from life when 92% of the world does not have shelter, food, or any money to their name?

“So the world’s not fair. Welcome to real life, sweetheart.”

“You are not in heaven yet; do not dream that you are. It would be a pity for a sailor to expect the sea to be as stable as the land, for the sea will be the sea to the end; and the world will be the world to you as long as you are in it.”
Charles Spurgeon

It is true. The world isn’t fair. It is a terribly broken and sinful place, and we are living here.

But. We are not from here. “Our citizenship is in heaven.” (Philippians 3:20). We belong to a Kingdom and a King very concerned with fairness and justice. We should concern ourselves with “fairness” insofar as it means “equality” because that is the desire closest to the heart of God.

“For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’” Galatians 5:14

If our neighbour is suffering from poverty, we cannot go on living with more than we need. That is not love. And if we have not love, we are nothing (1 Corinthians 13:2). True love gives to its neighbour even when it means doing without something necessary, let alone something merely desirable. To love our neighbours the same as we love ourselves is to put someone else’s needs at least equal to our own. We think we know this command. It is fundamental to even the shallowest reading of Scripture, and yet we struggle to put it into practise at all. We love the idea of love, but that seems to be as far as it goes. Let’s not get carried away. Sacrifice is very well, but let’s not take it so far as to actually do without.

So it is Sinful to be Rich?

Money is not evil. Money is neutral. Money is like food. We all need food. Food cannot be evil. If a farmer is blessed with an overwhelmingly abundant harvest, do we say he is a bad man? That would be absurd! But if he were to keep all that food while his neighbour starved… then he would be practising the most despicable act of evil.

It is the same with money. With abundance comes the responsibility to diligently dispose of that abundance. It is a responsibility of management, not a personal gift nor a curse. Money is not for us to keep, but to give away. 

Wealth becomes problematic for Christians when we fail to recognise “enough” versus “abundance.” How much is enough? How much is too much? There were many rich people in the Bible.

There were many harlots in the Bible too. 


How Much Is Enough?

To attempt an ethical solution for myself, I began by turning to reports by the World Institute for Development Economics Research and UN global data resources for an answer to the problem of so many poor neighbours in the global community. According to the survey and studies of 2006, if the wealth of the world was redistributed evenly across the global population we would all be worth about 26,000 US dollars. Now, that is not income, this is a total wealth figure including all assets and erasing all debts and it applies only to adults, but I was surprised it was so high a figure. With so many hundred million people sitting in the dust of abject poverty in the developing world, I was sure the redistribution would leave us all poorer. 

An easier figure to apply to life was another study (also with the 2006 data) which estimated that in a similar redistribution we would have 15,000 US dollars a year of income for the average family of five. It doesn’t sound like much, but in applying this as a standard to our lives as an equity of wealth, we would need to take into account cost of living in different areas. If we were to move to much of Eastern Europe, India, South-East Asia, Africa or Central America, this income would be sufficient to support a family. A more accurate number once adjusted accordingly for the Ontario cost of living (a) and the benefits of Provincial services paid for by taxes gives us a family after tax income of 36,952 USD, based on a family of five.

In a fair global economy we would not be disastrously beggared and we would not be living at anyone else’s expense. That is about the amount of money that we can spend on our own lives and families without monopolizing more than our “fair share” of the world’s wealth.

A Bench Mark

With a bench mark number to guide our spending habits, we can come around to the most important piece to the global wealth equation: money is not finite. Distributing the wealth of the planet across its population is indeed scriptural and correct according to the Law and the Spirit of the Law. But money is not wealth even when it is used to buy quality of life. Money is worthless without the value system attached. Wealth is comprised of the actual assets necessary to a high quality of life. 

Wealth is Resources

As long as our understanding of wealth is tied up in our understanding of money, we will make very little headway in the global justice department. While spending or saving or giving money is related to the spending, saving and giving of resources, it is not entirely the same. 

My life is a perfect example of this imbalance. I confess that I had a few moments of indulging in sanctimonious satisfaction when I crunched the numbers and arrived at an answer. I am young and poor and already living well below that income level. Lost in self-righteousness, I failed to grasp the implications of the second and arguably more important consideration of global wealth equity. We may now use me as a case study of how appearances can be deceiving and marvel together at the shortsightedness of my own ignorant gratification with my family's less than 36,952 dollar lifestyle. 

Laying it Bare

I live in a 702 square foot apartment with my husband. I am a vegetarian. I don’t own a car. I have a bicycle and my own two feet as well as limited use of public transit. I am not running heat in my apartment. I turn off the lights when I leave the room. We unplug our appliances when they are not in use. We have energy efficient appliances and half of our light bulbs are LEDs. I recycle. I hang dry all of my laundry. I make almost all of our food from scratch. I buy organic, sustainable and ethical products. All of my household cleaners, soaps and shampoos are biodegradable. I buy less than 2 articles of clothing per year. My laptop is 7 years old and still going strong. My phone is in its 3rdyear and while not going strong, I have not replaced it. I buy food from the local farmer’s co-op. And all of this is accomplished on less than the amount per year that I calculated as fair use.

My life sounds pretty extreme and sustainable. 

I am such an upstanding, socially and environmentally responsible person.

On paper. 

When you look, but don’t look critically.

Man judges by the outward appearance. 

I flew to Eastern Europe by plane this year. I buy some food from local farmers, but I also buy coconut oil, cocoa powder, sugar, spices, fruits, and many other products from the grocery store. I take the train sometimes. I get rides in cars sometimes. A few times a year I borrow a car. I take long showers. I don’t have a vegetable garden. I don’t compost very much. I usually buy things new. 

I found the Ecological Footprint Calculators. There are quite a few. I remember using them in High School for some class or another. This time I took my time. I calculated the distances I travel in a year very carefully, sparing nothing. I was careful not to over or under estimate anything. I really and truly wanted to know.

If everyone in the world lived as I do, would there be enough resources to go around?





 “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.”
1 Timothy 1:15

I don’t want to be discouraging. I haven’t tried nearly as hard to be sustainable and live justly as I know we need to. There are things that cost money which use resources. Most things, really. Flights and cars and imported goods and new materials… the list goes on and on. 

But...

There are many things I would do differently if I had the money to do them. I would have a better insulated home and I would have land to compost and grow vegetables on. There are things about this problem that more money can fix. 

That is the truth of the matter. An equal distribution of money… all of us cutting back and just spending less money… is a Band-Aid solution. Money is not the same thing as Wealth. And everyone should have an equal share of this world’s wealth. It is not a "spend-the-least" contest.

We are spending more of the world’s money than we are entitled to. Not all of us, but in general in this country and in this quadrant of the world. It cannot be denied. But the focus should not be on the money, at least not solely. Yes, it is with money that we must purchase resources for those who have been cheated of them. But it is also with money, sometimes more money, that we must buy smarter, fewer resources for ourselves to end the vicious cheating cycle. 

Living far below the fair expenditure line as I do (on less than 12,000 per person/year income) is hard on the environment as I cut corners and fail to invest in more sustainable alternatives, though this is equally the case with many people living larger lives. Living above that wealth line (36,952 per family or 18,476 per adult) may allow you to invest heavily in environmentally sustainable solutions, but fails to distribute current resources (which can be bought only with money) to those people who are starving today.

It is only through applying both categories of wealth equity that we can arrive at an ethical use of global resources. Living with "enough" is defined legally in Ontario as "the poverty line" - that amount of money necessary to sustain an acceptable quality of life. The amount is currently an income of 18,582. A shockingly similar number to the amount every person would have in a fair global economy. So if we all lived with "enough" money, if we all lived on less than 1 7 billionth of the Earth's resources (a sustainable environmental footprint), then all people on Earth would have enough to live.


But I like having nice things. Doesn’t God want us to be happy? Doesn’t he promise us mansions and crowns in Heaven? Isn’t that the ideal?

John 14:2 says, “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” (KJV)

Mansions is translated from "monay" meaning a dwelling or an abode

The NASB translates it much more clearly: “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.

There are five types of crowns promised in the New Testament. None of them are crowns of worldly riches or jewels though. They are crowns from the Greek word “stephanos” meaning “a badge of royalty, a prize in the public games or a symbol of honor generally" (Crowns).

We are promised a place in Heaven, not a palace. We are promised recognition in Heaven, not riches. To think that God’s promises of a perfect Kingdom mean rich furnishings and a yacht and pool house for every man is to sell God’s promises short. It would be the same for me to say that because I cannot imagine anything better than the degree of love I feel for my husband, I expect to still be married to him in Heaven. 

We will not be married in Heaven. Jesus is quite clear about marriage and its application to this life alone (Matthew 22:30). My inability to imagine something better does not preclude God’s ability to create something better. There will be rewards in Heaven. We must be careful not to assume they are rewards we can understand from Earth.


A Focus on Material Reward is Dangerous

Rather than promising us worldly wealth in heaven, God warns against focusing on wealth, money or possessions at all

Proverbs 23: 4 “Do not weary yourself to gain wealth, cease from your consideration of it.”

1 Timothy 6:7-11 “If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith… But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness.”

Money as it is discussed in these passages is from the word “mammon” which is thought to have been a deity of the ancient world: the personification of desire for material wealth. 

Hebrews 13:5 “Make sure that your character is free from the love of money.”

Our actions should not be attempts to gain money: riches, material comfort, additional resources. Our actions should not take advantage of the money that we have for those things either: riches, material comfort, etc. But rather we should concern ourselves with the redistribution and preservation of precious resources which is the physical manifestation of love to our neighbours. A love which at its greatest is a shadow, a pale replica, of the love that God has bestowed upon us. 


The World’s Resources and God’s Promises

Studies in 2012 concluded that the world already grows enough food to feed the prospective population of 2050. We have enough food every year to comfortably sustain 10 billion people (World Hunger). Food production is not the problem. What is? The simple answer is: everything else. Distribution, markets, availability, priorities. But the point is that we have enough. The world is increasingly shorter of resources as we burn through them unsustainably and grow in population. But we still have enough to go around. It just isn't making the rounds.

We often throw up our hands (mentally if not physically) at the problems in the world and decide to concern ourselves mostly with our own communities, after all, God loves me and I’m doing my best, right? Well… yes to the first. But can we really say we are doing our best when we have failed to examine what that might be? We throw up our hands too quickly. And in doing so shirk our responsibility to the Gospel.

Caring for the orphans, widows, poor, hungry, homeless, suffering, afflicted... it was this that Jesus spent his time in ministry doing. It is this we are called to do ourselves. Not merely in token amounts, but with our entire beings, at the expense of many other thing, with our very lives.

The Gospel can be summed up as the good news of Christ’s redemption of us and the promise of the Kingdom which the redemption has made possible. What is the use of the redemption if it does not usher us into the Kingdom? It is of no use! Not to the man outside the Kingdom's gates. An invitation to a feast is of no use once the feast has begun and the doors are shut.

When Christ returns and the Kingdom is realized on earth, “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid” (Micah 4:3-4).

Not only do we strip the world of the vines and fig trees of other men, not only do we leave our neighbor in poverty while we live in plenty, not only do we instil the terror of desperation in our brothers through our neglect and hording, but we do so in the name of God. By claiming that God has given us our abundant wealth as a personal blessing, we claim that God has favoured us above the least of these and that He has orchestrated their poverty so that we might live in plenty.

The world's resources are finite. Our abundance is at the expense of our neighbours.

God never promised us a castle for every man. There is a scene in the Robin Hood movie with Russell Crowe when King John asks him mockingly if in demanding equality he requires a castle for every man and Crowe as Robin Hood replies, “Every Englishman’s home is his castle.”

When a man has enough, he has everything.

The promise was never for mansions and castles and worldly gain. God has promised us all things good, but he never told us it would be these excessive material riches. Our own vine and our own fig tree with no one to make us afraid. Enough. That is the promise. We will have enough. What loved man would need more?

And yet we dismiss God’s Kingdom as something only for next world because in this world it would be impossible. True peace in this world, in this time is impossible, yes, because sin is still at large. But enough for every man – an integral promise of the Kingdom to come – this is not impossible. It is only impossible when we fail through willful refusal to participate in the Kingdom’s plan.


 “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” C.K. Chesterton




What’s your Ecological Footprint?


 

Read More:




Thursday 12 December 2013

Step 1: The Bad List




 It is time to identify all of the lurking gluten that is out there and free your life of it. You can’t get well if you don’t know what is making you sick and if you don’t learn how to avoid it.

What is gluten and where is it hiding?

Gluten is a protein. I am not going to get into the whole sad history of gluten and why it has become our enemy. It is not important while you are sick. What is important is getting you well again. Gluten is hiding EVERYWHERE. Or so it will seem at first. We will begin with the most obvious places to find it and work our way down.

Grains

Wheat is the grain most well-known for its gluten-content. Also on the bad list are rye, barely, spelt, and
oats.

There are places where these grains are hiding under different names. Semolina, for example, is wheat by another name. You need to cultivate an awareness for exactly what things are. You have to ask yourself before putting something in your mouth – “What’s a semolina? How would that grow?” And if you don’t know the answer, don’t risk it.

Now it is difficult and it takes time to cultivate that awareness, so I will give you the heads up on some of the trickier places where these grains like to hide out.

Yogurt

Any yogurt that has a flavour other than “plain white yogurt” is a product to be suspicious of. Mainstream yogurts are all flavoured with “barley malt extract” but the “barley” is sometimes left off the label. Anything that says “malt” on it means that there is barley in there unless it specifically says otherwise. We’re supposed to assume that malt means barley.

Ground pepper, icing sugar, baking powder

These are all potentially hiding wheat in them. It is added to these products to help them not go clumpy while they are on the shelf. It never shows up in the ingredient list on the label though. Don’t eat any of these products unless they are specifically labelled “gluten-free” or “wheat-free.”

Alcohol, vinegar, mayonnaise, salad dressing, flavour/natural flavour, extract, colour

All of these words mean the same thing: fermented grains. Now, there are many people who will tell you that it is safe for Celiac patients and people with gluten-sensitivity to eat and drink grain products once they are distilled. The gluten content is “below the acceptable percentage” and “no longer dangerous.” There are many more people who will tell you that as people experienced with living with Celiac disease, there is no such thing as an “acceptable” or “safe” percentage. Even if small doses do not make you sick or barely make you sick, they are still harming your intestinal flora and it can still result in cancer after only a few years.

Not all alcohol has gluten in it. There are many alcohols made from safe grains and other plants. Potato vodka, wine, brandy, tequila, and cognac are all safe alcohols to name a few. The problem is that the alcohols used for food ingredients and vinegars are usually wheat based or a mixture of corn and wheat. If a company cannot tell you what kind of alcohol their vinegar is made from, then it is a safe assumption that it has wheat in it. Mayonnaise and salad dressing are just some of the products with wheat vinegar commonly hiding in them. 

Flavour, extract and colour do not have vinegar in them, they contain pure alcohol. Even something labelled “pure vanilla extract” is generally at least 30% alcohol, and that alcohol is almost always wheat derived. Flavours are usually extracted using alcohol, so anything labelled as a flavour, colour or an extract should be treated as wheat unless the company can tell you precisely what it is. 

I have come up against this odd problem of companies telling me that it is a “secret ingredient” and they cannot disclose its nature. They will usually assure me that it has no gluten in it: an empty promise since most of the world doesn’t know what gluten is and where it is hiding. The laws are beginning to change and companies will soon HAVE to disclose all of their ingredients, but we are not there yet.

Maltodexterin

This is barley. It is pretending not to be since there is more word added onto the word “malt” but don’t be fooled. It is still gluten.

Prepared icing, sprinkles and other decorating supplies

We already went over icing sugar, but you may not have made the leap to prepared icing. It also has wheat hiding in it. Sprinkles, candy, puddings, and gels or other non-food foods like these sometimes don’t even have ingredients on them for some reason. I guarantee they have colour in them. If the company can’t tell you exactly what’s in them, then toss ‘em.

Now let’s take a step into the kitchen

You need to clean out your cupboards, toss the now illegal products and scrub out any lingering gluteny residues. A little bit of flour goes a long way.

You also need to clean out that refrigerator and freezer. Throw out the ketchup and mustard (vinegar), probably the salsa, the salad dressing and mayonnaise, the yogurt: anything that has ingredients you don’t know what they are. You need to always know.  Now that you’ve thrown out everything bad, you need to throw out some more. Anything that is open in the fridge that a utensil might have gone into. Peanut butter, jam, honey, etc. If there is any chance that it has crumbs in it or that any gluteny substance has ended up in there, then it needs to go. 

Those are not the only things you need to do to get your kitchen fixed.

Now look around the room. Gluten is not a germ. It is not a virus. It cannot be “killed.” The usual methods of cleaning are all geared at germs and yucky things that can be overpowered with the right cleaner. Gluten is not like that. And there are things in your kitchen that cannot be cleaned. 

The scrubbing sponge

It is absorbent. There is no hope for it. It is absolutely filled with gluten. Try not to even touch it very much as you throw it in the trash bin.

Your wooden spoons

Or anything else that is made of wood. If you have a wooden cutting board, it needs to go too. I promise you, there is no way to redeem it. Put it into the box with all the food you’re getting rid of and whoever is inheriting the food also gets a cutting board. If it is “special” for some reason other than for cutting things, then hang it on a wall somewhere you will get to keep it and see it but won’t have to touch it.
If you have wooden handled knives, or salad tongs, or bowls or whatever – get rid of the wood!

Cork

Same story. You might have a pot holder that is cork. It needs to go.

The moral of this story is that anything crafted from a porous substance will have gluten permanently entrenched inside the grain. If you ever want to be well again, it all has to go.

Products

We’re almost done with the kitchen. Just one more thing. Your dish soap. Read the ingredients. Any alcohol in there? Is it made from wheat? Mine was. It took me a year and a half to realize that the SOAP was making me sick. You’re not supposed to eat dish soap, obviously, but it does happen. It is on everything you eat with and it finds its way into your system.

Implement these changes, purge your lifestyle and home of all the nasty, lurking gluten, and you will be one huge step closer to getting better.



Next Up: So what’s left? Learning what is good to eat on a Gluten-Free Diet.







How To Plan an Adventure



Open road on the West Highland Way, Scotland. 2012.
For the first time traveller, the idea of planning a true adventure is often overwhelming. Perhaps having been on a tour-guided trip or a vacation before, you feel that setting off on your own into uncharted (by you) lands is overrated or just too much work. For some people, it is enough to go to a resort or be ushered through the world according to someone else's timeline. For the rest of us, here are some resources that have helped me navigate the open road and find some true adventures:

Planning and Dreaming

Lonely Planet

Maps and guidebooks: they’re the stuff that dreams are made of. The Lonely Planet website can keep a dreaming traveller occupied for days. Decide where you would like to go then read up on it. It takes a lot of reading before you have any idea what there is to see, and more importantly what YOU would like to see. You don’t want to drive past the turn off to a wonderful (insert whatever you are most interested in) just because you didn’t know it was there.

This stage should also help you to plan your attack strategy – the direction you want to go first, the cities that have the best transport between them and where the local tour guides operate out of. You can waste valuable trip time figuring something out that you could have planned months before on your lunch break.

Travel Blogs

More inspiration for dreaming can be found in travel magazines, but these days travel writers are much more easily found on blogs. There are so many of them out there, I bet there is a travel blogger who has been to the place you are going. Read a few different people’s stories and advice to get the clearest version. Then you will be able to make decisions for yourself.

I like to read Nomadic Matt and  Wand'rly. Here are some other winning blogs from this year.


Finding a Flight

Skyscanner.ca

This website pick up almost all airlines. I find it to be an invaluable resource when looking for flights to and around Europe. Apparently it doesn’t always work so well for flights in other parts of the world, but for planning a EuroTrip it is great.

I use it to search flights, but not to book them. In my experience, once you have found a flight for the best deal on Skyscanner then you should go directly to the airline’s website and buy from them. It has always gotten me a better price. It is worth it to price check between a few airline sites before booking; sometimes the prices shown by flight finders do not include all of the options on the original sites.

I have friends who swear by Cheapoair and  Momondo, but Skyscanner is the one I use. Sites like Expedia and Orbitz are useless for the backpacker or budget traveler. They are owned by airline companies and other understandably biased businesses; they never offer the best deals.


Booking Your Stay

Hostelworld.com

A great website for finding and comparing accommodations. The best part of the website is the reviews sections. The star ratings can give you some idea of what you are looking at, but really it is the comments that show the place most clearly. If all the complaints against a hostel are from a certain age-range or a certain country’s travellers, then you can learn much more than what the other travellers have explicitly said. Cultural differences come out in the comments and maybe you are ok with a quieter place one night, but it has been slammed in the reviews for not having enough “fun” and “character.” If it was a whole bunch of 18 year old American males who left those comments, then chances are they were looking for a drinking party and didn’t find one.

That is based on my observations while travelling. I know not all 18 year old American males are looking for a wild time. But you have to make some generalizations when choosing accommodations from reviews. And there are some that I’ve found to be tried and true. We all travel for different reasons and hostelworld lets you weigh the pros and cons of hostels, inns, guesthouses, bed and breakfasts, and some standard hotels to find the place best suited to your budget and specific trip needs.

Housetrip.com

London, England. 2012.
This is an online service that allows people to list their homes, apartments, or spare rooms for rent as vacation accommodations. You can go through pictures, prices and reviews to find something that suits your budget and style. The service charges your payment when you make a booking, but they withhold payment from the owner until after you have arrived at the rental and have had time to verify that it is what was promised.

I used housetrip to find a place to stay in London, England a couple years ago and I booked the cheapest place available. It was a spare room in a couple’s flat and they had a very dirty kitchen. But I felt that it was worth what I paid for it, so I did not lodge a complaint (it was WAY cheaper than anything else available in London – cheaper than a hostel and for a private room). When I gave them a mediocre review later, Housetrip contacted me immediately and credited me a large discount on my next booking with them in apology for my stay not being brilliant. I booked an apartment in Rome using them later in the year and it all came through without a hitch. I would definitely use them again. Their customer service is excellent.

Couchsurfing.org

With this service your experience will be only as good as you make it. Here you can post your travel plans and send out a blanket plea for someone to host you or meet up with you or whatever you are after. You can also search through profiles to find someone you think is a good match and then send them a personal message with your request. This is a great way to really get into a place and culture. You are instantly in contact with a local on the ground and you get a good look into their life because you have the view from their couch! (Or even spare room sometimes.)

Couchsurfing has helped me out a few times. I have surfed with some wonderful, fun and gracious hosts from the UK to Romania.

A word of warning: couchsurfing is not just a free place to stay, although some hosts are perfectly ok with that. It is generally understood that you are staying with a host because you would like to hang out and have a “real” experience of their city or locale. If that is not what you are after, then please be specific when you are contacting people to avoid misunderstandings, bad feelings and possibly a ruined trip.

Buying Your Gear

Tilley

Tilley Endurables makes some great stuff. Underwear that dries overnight after you’ve hand washed it in the hotel sink. Hats that keep African sun from your whole face and never fly away in a Siberian wind storm. If you are doing any sort of adventuring and you have space in your budget for some Tilley gear, then I would recommend trying it out.

MEC

Mountain Equipment Co-op is a great store for travel needs. They don’t have sales and promotions, but they do have a clearance section. You can watch online for things to get marked down into clearance and then you can score some great deals. I bought a rain coat that I needed for my last trip from them for a fantastic discount.

MEC is not just great for their price drops. Their factories are well regulated and inspected that manufacture their MEC brand name products. They sell other brands in their store and not all of them are as ethical, but MEC brand is a sure bet.

Amazon.ca

The ever expanding giant of online shopping, Amazon now has a travel-related database called Travel Central that can be useful when you are price shopping for clothing gear, portable electronics and travel books.

Packing Your Bag

Pack you bag a week before you leave. Get it all in. Strap everything up. Stand back and admire it. Now unpack it.

You only need half of what is in there. Believe me.

Keep repeating this until the day before you leave. Every day. By the time you leave, you will be more or less free of unnecessary stuff you thought you needed. Or so you will think until you have hauled that sucker through a couple airports. On every trip I have ever taken I have over-packed. I have dumped stuff into garbage cans in airports, left things with hosts, dropped things off at second hand places, and still felt weighed down by what I have to carry.

Unless you are travelling into a cold climate and you are going to be camping, you have too much stuff in that bag.

Check out this packing list to get you started.


Before You Fly the Coop

Call your credit card and bank 

With the fraud squads being so active on accounts these days, I have had my cards frozen while they’ve just been sitting innocently in my wallet at home. If you fly away without telling the companies and banks that you are leaving and where you are going, then you are going to have frozen cards before your plane touches down. Call the numbers on the backs of all your cards and tell them exactly where you’re going and what day you’ll be back.
Don’t take a lot of cash with you. I made this mistake on my first backpacking trip as a teenager. Unless you are heading into an active war zone (and why would you be?) or remote wilderness you will be able to find a bank machine on the ground when you arrive. I have found that there is no reason to ever be carrying more than 800 dollars in cash in expensive places (Western Europe) and usually this is way too much. In the typical backpacking areas (Eastern Europe, Central America, South-East Asia), 800 dollars cash will last me three weeks. I generally only carry one and a half week's worth of local currency on me.

Buy or verify your health insurance

Make sure that you have coverage overseas and for all the days that you will be gone. Many health plans cover 30, 60 or 90 days so make sure to check yours. It is not hard to buy top-up days or a new plan, but you will be in serious trouble if you find yourself airlifted to a German hospital and suddenly facing a couple hundred thousand Euros in hospital bills.
Not only do you need to have the coverage, but make sure you have the papers with you on your trip. With most plans you need to call a phone number to activate your use when something happens and you may have to give your account number. Keep the papers somewhere safe in your wallet and make a photocopy to tuck somewhere secure in your bag as a backup.

Photocopy your ID, Bank Card, and Credit Cards

Speaking of backups: photocopy everything you carry in your wallet and hide it in your bag somewhere secure where you won’t lose it. This includes your passport. You will have a much easier time cancelling your credit card when your wallet gets stolen if you have a photocopy with the phone number to call on it. So photocopy everything, front and back, and keep it out of sight. You will also have a much easier time at the embassy when you’ve lost your passport if you have the photocopy with you.
I actually make a set of photocopies to leave behind at home as well. All of my ID and financial information, my travel plans and the bookings I have made so far. If you have someone at home to leave these things with, then I would highly recommend it. Not only will it give your family or friend peace of mind knowing where you’re planning to be, it will help you if you can call home in an emergency and they have all the information to do something for you.

Collect some mailing addresses

If you have grandparents or parents or young kids you are close to then I suggest making sure you have mailing addresses with you before you leave. There is nothing greater than a surprise post card for any of those people, and it is hard to send it as a surprise if you need to email them from your destination to ask for the address!

Pack some snacks for the plane.

Especially if you scored a budget flight, don’t expect food on the plane. If it is a long flight and you are a person with a human sized appetite, then never expect enough food on the plane. Pack snacks or even a full picnic. Just make sure you don’t have items in there that won’t be allowed past your own border. Some fruits, vegetables and dairy, to name a few, are not allowed into or out of different countries. Research the rules for where you’re going. When in doubt, granola bars have never gotten me into trouble.

"Most importantly, don't assume that the adventure of your dreams is out of your reach. Adventures are much more attainable than most people realize - you just have to be willing to take the slow, smelly train & cook cheap food in your hostel. And maybe work a second job for a few months pre-adventure. This is all part of the fun." 

Heather Morrison

 
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