The Purchase of Stuff!

This past weekend was a great one in terms of getting (for lack of a better word)...STUFF! And pretty important stuff at that! I wanted to get a good backpack for this trip not only because we'll be switching hotels every couple of days, but also because I want to get used to lugging it around on short trips before I take it on longer ones so I can work any issues out at the gym.

I know absolutely nothing about backpacks but luckily for me, Dana was more than happy to come along and shove pounds and pounds of sandbags into pockets while I stumbled around awkwardly under the weight and attempted to climb stairs. It took us about 2.5 hours and three stores to find it.



And here it is, and it even matches the blog perfectly (the trim inside is yellow)!

It's a panel loader with a detachable daypack, 70 L + 15 L capacity. That's space for a lot of juice. I sort of wish I could understand the website, though I'm sure "Deuter" means something along the lines of "Awesome." As I have an ongoing trend of naming important things, for now I'm calling the backpack Cassiopeia after the turtle in one of my favourite books. I think it has to relate to turtles somehow because of the whole carry everything on their backs thing.

The second purchase was a universal adapter that works "from Australia to Zimbabawe" (I liked the sound of that, though I feel a bit bad for Algeria and most other A countries). Apparently, the product is designed for "Overseas use only." Does Costa Rica technically count as an overseas country? I didn't really think so.

After spending a few hours today looking at Judy's amazing New Zealand / Australia pictures, it's finally starting to dawn on me that I'm going somewhere, so I'm getting a bit excited ;)