Weighing Day (Day 143)
How much do you think on average a T-shirt weighs? What about 5 pairs of Tim’s pants? One of our tasks for today was a weighing day, to weigh our luggage.
When we fly to Melbourne, Tasmania, Uluru and then back to Sydney we are only taking hand luggage which is 7kg each. The rucksacks we are taking and my laptop weigh 3.3kg so that only leaves us 10.7kg for toiletries, shoes and clothes so it's essential that we use each gramme wisely.
I have been in my element creating a glorified spreadsheet. One column includes the weight of items that we both need (toiletries, technology, rucksacks), then….now this is sad, but those of you that know me well would expect this from me, we have weighed 1 x pants/t-shirt/shorts for Tim and 1 x knickers/t-shirt/skirt for me then I have prorated the remaining weight. Tim has 5.35kg and I have 3.05kg of weight to play with.
It’s been a very useful exercise as we have realised that we still have quite a bit of “stuff” that we don’t really need, so I expect there will be a clearing out task next to get rid of the excess.
We decided not to travel anywhere today apart from walking down to seeing Tim’s mate Gym. I had a go on a few of the weight training machines, I worked out how to use these ones. Also I surpassed myself on the rowing machine, apparently I was doing Fartlek training; continuous training with interval training – Phew – I even broke out in a sweat! Tim seemed knackered after his training so I think he also surpassed himself! On our walk back we saw a tree decorated as if it was Christmas! Not sure what’s going on there – is it early or late?
As well as weighting and weight plus a bit of relaxing in the 27 degree sunshine, we are both studying – keeping those neural pathways busy. Tim is learning Spanish and I have started learning Japanese using Duolingo on our phones. I keep hearing Tim saying bebe – bebo – bebes – beben – bebenos and then muttering under his breath when he gets one of the verbs incorrect. Whereas I am way behind, learning the sounds and signs for yo, na, sa etc. So far I have learnt 1 – 7, red, white, blue, yes and good morning. At least when we get to Japan in May I will be able to say “Good morning 4 red (point to a red item) Yes” “O-ha-yo-u, yo-n a-ka (point) ha-i”
As well as learning a language we are also learning the flags around the world. Our friend Carol who we know from camping introduced us to this idea. So before we travelled we bought a pack of cards where each includes the flag, capital, population, location and a few details of each country. Unfortunately rather than decluttering the house before we sold it, Tim’s “Instant gratification monkey” (See Tim Urban's Ted Talk) would appear and he’d be found studying these cards rather than sorting out his office cupboards. I have only just started, so yesterday learnt the 12 flags of South America – do you know what the 12 countries are?
Well, that’s it for yesterday, Weighing, Weights, Learning Languages and Flags – all in a day’s work for the Grown Up Travellers.
