Over the years as we gained experience from planning 15+ trips, we developed and enhanced two worksheets to help us track our travel expenditures and document our trip itineraries. Our latest travel planning was truly a collaborative effort between Jenny and I. As I focused on documenting our itinerary using Google Maps and our homegrown spreadsheets, Jenny delved into finding and bookmarking some of the most relevant YouTube travel videos for the different places we would be visiting during our journey. Although we have invested a fair amount of time planning our trip, we’ve learned that things can (and will) always show up along the way to disrupt our original plan. Hence, our itinerary remains a work in progress.
One of the most preoccupying element of our trip planning regarded our beloved Sony RX100 travel camera. The camera started to display an error code at the beginning of our EuroVelo2022 cycling trip but it kept on capturing our many digital photos throughout that trip. Back home, I attempted to fix the camera as I had successfully done so on three previous occasions. Unfortunately, this time around, the repair failed miserably. I learned afterwards that the ribbon connections became quite brittle in these older cameras. Our camera was Sony’s first release of the RX100 series. The company went on to manufacture six evolutionary releases of the RX100 – the latest release (VII) from 2019 retailed for over $1,600. Sadly, the older RX100 models were only available on the “used” market. After monitoring eBay and Kijiji for a few weeks, we lucked out with an eBay seller near our home which offered the same release of our RX100 camera – but with a catch. The camera was advertised with the heading of “For parts only – Does not turn ON”. Nonetheless, we purchased the camera for $100 with the hope of repairing it with parts of our older camera. After closer inspection, we discovered the newly purchased camera was in better condition than our own. Further, we managed to find a workaround to turn the camera ON. We’ll have to wait to see how reliable the camera stays along this trip.
We opted to travel with our backpacks – hence no bicycle touring this time around. This mode of travel granted us a bit more flexibility in our choice of clothes and equipment to bring along with us.
Our official luggage weighing at home revealed that my backpack came in at 11.9 kg while Jenny’s was only 8.3 kg. Our carry-on daypack weighed 3.1 kg while Jenny’s travel purse was a mere 1.6 kg. Clearly, Jenny has learned to pack lighter after those few long bicycle journeys!
And we’ll be leaving this behind us.
