Most of you know I've gone around the world with a backpack a few times. Just me and 40 pounds on my back for extended trips, sometimes a year, sometimes a few weeks.
What not all of you know is about a kind of hoarding you do when traveling this way. It happens to me when I take long car camping trips too.
You hoard little packets of things. Salt. Pepper. Soy sauce. Single wipe packets that come with finger food. Tiny sewing kits from hotels. Little soaps.
And then, after months of traipsing around on public transit across Zambia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Bolivia...you go home. You go into ShopRite or Ralphs or Kroger...one of the 24-hour mega supermarkets.
And the choice is overwhelming. Holy shit. Look at all that stuff!
And you still hang onto condiment packets for a few more months. What if the next time you go to ShopRite, the shelves are bare, or that specialty item has magically gone away, like at the ShopRite in Kampala?
Today, as I looked at the empty paper and pasta aisles in Vons, I wondered if maybe that's going to be us in 4 months. Still buying pasta to stash under the sink. In case tomorrow, Vons is out of pasta again.
What not all of you know is about a kind of hoarding you do when traveling this way. It happens to me when I take long car camping trips too.
You hoard little packets of things. Salt. Pepper. Soy sauce. Single wipe packets that come with finger food. Tiny sewing kits from hotels. Little soaps.
And then, after months of traipsing around on public transit across Zambia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Bolivia...you go home. You go into ShopRite or Ralphs or Kroger...one of the 24-hour mega supermarkets.
And the choice is overwhelming. Holy shit. Look at all that stuff!
And you still hang onto condiment packets for a few more months. What if the next time you go to ShopRite, the shelves are bare, or that specialty item has magically gone away, like at the ShopRite in Kampala?
Today, as I looked at the empty paper and pasta aisles in Vons, I wondered if maybe that's going to be us in 4 months. Still buying pasta to stash under the sink. In case tomorrow, Vons is out of pasta again.
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