ISO 100 | 73mm | f 4.0 | 1/250 sec

“You can never pack enough,” they always said, and I’ve mostly found that to be true.  I’ve never regretted bringing extra pairs of jeans, loading my bag up with socks, grabbing twice as many books as I could possibly read in a month, or stuffing snacks into the side-pockets of my bag, just in case.  The fact of the matter is, you just never know when you might need something that you weren’t anticipating; but I know that when you find yourself stuck on the side of the road with an overheated engine, you’ll thank yourself for packing the extra radiator and gallon of antifreeze.

There’s only one problem with packing so much stuff, and that is the issue of finding stuff when you need it.  You could literally spend hours searching through piles of clothes, toiletries, tools, spare zerks and gaskets, ziploc bags full of half-dead batteries, extension cables, kitchenware, first-aid kits, boxes of coloring crayons, and packages of unopened playing cards, only to discover that in your zeal to pack everything but the kitchen sink, you forgot to bring what you need most right at that moment.
It’s times like these that you wish you had a bigger suitcase.

I personally have had reasonable success in implementing this method, there have only been a few times that I’ve come back from a trip realizing that I went a little overboard (I think that was the time I brought the spare bicycle tire, the impact wrench, and the inflatable hot tub).  There are still instances where I dump my bag’s contents all over the floor and cull through the odd assortment of stuff until I find what I’m looking for, but more often than not, what I need is right there!

So take it from me, you can never pack enough.  Take this principle and run with it, and maybe pack an extra set of vice-grips while you’re at it…