This one’s mostly pictures.

There’s not a huge amount to say about the trip.
The passenger areas of the ferry are quite nice, a lot of folks seem to stake out seats by a window and then immediately fall asleep, which seems like a waste of a nice view, and they really do pack the cars in on those decks.

Turns out there’s a ramp from the lower deck, where you get on the ship, to the upper deck; Said ramp lifts up when they’re sailing, possibly to limit the amount of weather & salt spray making it to the lower deck?

And, of course, there’s the scenery.

All of which eventually gets us to Picton.
We were all herded downstairs, to vehicles or to a rabble on the lower deck, so I didn’t get to watch the docking. Basically, we stood in a clump until the big doors opened.

Though I did manage to get a shot just before I went to the lower deck, when we were almost there.

I did a lot of pretty close to nothing in Wellington.
just wanted to put that out there, in case anyone thought I’d have huge and portentous things to talk about

Getting from the bus station, which is also the train station, into the Cuba Street area was made so much easier by having a pack on my back. And another smaller day bag on the front, but that’s not important right now.

Found a café which would make me a food, then hopped a bus over to The Great Hall.
Plans for the day involved ‘not much’, though I did get a new pair of boots, the soles on my old ones having hit the non-waterproof point. Fell asleep on the couch for a while, as the night bus wasn’t that comfortable.

In deference to back issues, my bed for the night was the lounge floor, with a duvet for padding and another one for warmth, and it was pretty comfy. In days of yore, perhaps this would have been the prize spot, the best place in the hall, right in front of the fire.
Seeing as how this is a flat, it’s the spot in between the sofa and the TV, and lacks some of the crackling-fire ambiance, though I’m sure there’s a fireplace DVD or ’10 hours of log fire’ video out there somewhere, if I’d gone looking.

Rather than list all of things I didn’t do, I’ll go with all the stuff I did.

• Watched a bunch of Killjoys – I’d started watching this at House Needs-A-Name, but didn’t finish it.
  So we finished it, and it was worth doing. Looking forward to the next season.
• Was introduced to the show Assassination Classroom, and have watched the whole first season.
  Am also looking forward to season two.
  
  
• Bought a new pair of jeans.
  The old ones started to give up the ghost somewhere in Taupo, or maybe Rotorua, but Wellington seemed the best place to replace them.
• Recorded a Big Red Couch episode from the front room of The Great Hall.
  Seemed to go well, though, based on editing, I need to find a better microphone solution.

There was also a visit to Zealandia, to see birds. And critters.

Janjo & the Miscellaneous Children (opening for Edwin Fracas & the Shower of Bastards at the Tropicana Lounge this Saturday) dropped me off at the bus stop for stage one of my trip to Wellington, the trip to Hamilton.
Sadly, I was not able to find a Hamilton postcard; Most places were shut by the time I got there, though I was able to find a net cafe to print my ticket for the night bus. Normally the InterCity bus folks don’t care, they just look for your name on the list, but for the night bus to Wellington, and presumably for other night buses, they wanted me to have a printout.
Maybe it makes it easier on the driver?

The desire for a Hamilton Tourist-Type postcard was so that I could send it to the GIS Team at my former job, as we’d had … How to put this? … issues with jobs concerning the city.
Issues involving 200%+ utilisation weeks because someone promised something without checking with the folks who actually had to do the work.
Issues involving taking fit-for-task data and making it objectively & demonstrably worse, at the client’s request.
I could go on, but I won’t.

So, without a postcard, I tried something new in the selfie line; What do you think?

I prefer the first one my own self.

I had a 4½ hour wait in Hamilton, so I checked the movie theatre across the road from the transport station (which closed at 6pm, thank you very much Hamiltron) and found a conveniently-timed session of Hunt for the Wilderpeople, so ate up some time that way. The theatre even stored my pack for me; It seems that they get a lot of backpackers.

The bus eventually arrived, pretty much on time.
I’d opted for the Gold Class option, only available on a few buses, with wider & more reclining seats, in the downstairs portion of the bus. The steerage passengers went upstairs, but more on that later.
The whole reason I traveled from Tauranga to Hamilton was to intercept the night bus with the comfy seats; The train is inconveniently timed, and the bus options due south from Tauranga, while they would have done the job, did not offer as much of a chance of sleeping.

I think I fell asleep somewhere in Taupo; I do remember the approach to, and main street of, the town, but I don’t remember leaving. I recall bits of Turangi, a bit of the Desert Road (one of the nasty corners) and Waiouru, Palmerston North, and Bulls, where my seatmate got out and I was able to claim the window seat for the last snooze leg of the trip.
Took me a while to work out how to deploy the leg rest, and how to lie so that the lights of the oncoming vehicles didn’t hit me right in the eyes, but I slept pretty well, and got into Wellington in the cold grey light of pre-dawn.

Oh, remember those steerage passengers upstairs?
I’m pretty confident that an elderly couple sat in the Gold Class area without tickets, and possibly without realising it.
One of them sat downstairs, and the other upstairs, but came down at regular intervals; Basically, at every stop.
When a seat opened up, he took it.
The driver, he did not seem to care, or even notice.

I only took one photo in Tauranga, so, uhhh, here it is;

yes the one picture I took in Tauranga was of two cats staring at each other on a roof why are you making such a big deal of this

For the most part, Tauranga was about hanging out with Janjo & Gareth, and their mobile noisemakers beasts children.
Laundry was also involved, and the weather mercifully allowed this to happen.

Watched a couple of movies with them, Mental and Ten Inch Hero, both of which were pretty damn good.
For the Supernatural fans, Ten Inch Hero has Jensen Ackles in it, and it’s worth reading his dreadful shirts.

We also went to a … Mitre 10? Bunnings? … not sure … A big damn hardware store with a garden centre attached, plus playground and cafe.
The playground was very much the focus of small human attention, right up to the point that we got there, at which point it became the forbidden zone, and he refused to go anywhere near it, or to allow the notion that other people might go near it. Said small mammal eventually changed his mind, grudgingly, when chips became a possibility, or maybe when abandonment in the store to fend for himself became a possibility.

There was also the assembly of a sauna; One of the two-person if they’re close indoor types.
That was quite fun, though small children have an unerring ability to get in the way when you’re moving or carrying or assembling things; Like cats, but much louder.
And maybe more sticky? Not sure.
In any case, the sauna panels slot together, and the wiring system had clip-together plugs which seemed fairly simple, though a certain amount of percussive persuading was needed for some parts, and it was only a two person assembly job if one of those people is an octopus.

It was a good weekend.

I took a look through my diary/day planner thing, after actually writing a post of course, because I’m clever, and came up with a few other thoughts.

I witnessed the greatest hitchhiking technique I’ve ever seen, demonstrated by Eben, who was probably from Israel.

I had a conversation with Eben about his travel plans (pretty vague) and mine; Happily, he agreed with my notion of trying out the hostel thing before I went overseas, and shared a pet peeve about hostel dorms, being that one guy who leaves stupidly early, and spends seventy billion hours making noise at 5am because he didn’t get organised the night before.
Eben’s thoughts boiled down to “get your stuff together the night before, and if you have to make noise, do it in the hallway”.

Of the other folk in the hostel I met, and there were many, there was the aforementioned Eben,

• a lady from Kyoto who was doing the working holiday thing,
• another lady from Estonia who’d worked the distribution & marketing side of the alcohol business, and now wanted to learn about the production side, so was WWOOFing to make that happen,
• a guy from Hiroshima who was also doing the working holiday thing, working at both the hostel and a local restaurant.
  He had … extensive travel plans. Back to Japan to check in with family, then Canada on a working holiday visa, then Europe as a tourist, then Australia as a working holidayer, then Central & South America, with an eye to not settling in Japan.
• The probably German hostel manager, or maybe evening manager, and the probably English but sounds German when she speaks the language day manager, who both extolled the virtues of Rotorua as a place to live.
  Given that they’d been here for years, if not decades, that’s kind of understandable.

The day manager also gave me some advice on the BBH Hostel listings, which was ‘stay above an 80% rating’.
Have taken this to heart.

I also bravely evicted a cockroach from the solarium/sunroom thingy one night, through the expert use of my coffee cup and a brochure.
It was a big-ass bush roach, and thus fairly friendly – It had wandered out from under the couch and was watching a German family play cards.

Leaving Taupo, I was able to stash my bag at the motel, so I wandered around the town for a while before taking the bus to Rotorua.

Ended up capturing this picture, which I’m pretty happy with;

Photographing a photographer photographing a photographer

… And this one, which just looks nice.

Then, on to Rotorua.

To be honest, I didn’t much see the point of photographing a lot of the scenic stuff in Rotorua. I’m using a cellphone camera, and it can’t capture as much as my eyes can, so the photos end up looking a bit crap.

My hostel was the Funky Green Voyager, which was a fantastic first hostel for the trip.
It’s set a very high bar, not in the least because of the profusion of comfy spaces to sprawl in while reading a book, or doing computer things. Using the kitchen was exactly as chaotic as I’d assumed it was going to be; Just making a cup of coffee required tricky timing to get through the crowd to the jug, then out again while it boiled, then back in.

Did some Big Red Couch stuff, had actual conversations with five different people, looked at the scenic wonders of Rotorua without actually spending any money on them, …, nothing spectacular, but it was kind of relaxing.
I did wander around the shoreline of the lake, where many thousands of midges wanted to be friends with my nostrils.
I also went to the Night Market, which was pretty fun; They’d closed off a couple of streets, put up those expanding stall things, had some live music. (One of whom was pretty good when he did his own stuff, but then he switched to acoustic covers of Creed songs, which … were not as good)

My one obnoxiously tourist thing was to go and ride the luge; Did this on my last day in town, between check out (where they gave me a guide to BBH Hostels & told me what percentage rating to try to stay above) and taking the bus to Tauranga.
I was able to stash my pack at the i-Site/Bus Terminal, and my backpack in a locker at the top of the luge, so there was no risk of loss or damage.

I’d forgotten how nice the view is from up a mountain – My attention was more focused on riding the little carts down said mountain.
That said; Look how pretty it is!

So I spent some time riding little gravity carts down a hill, on a variety of tracks which wind through forest, then riding a chairlift back up. Didn’t crash into anyone or injure myself, which is an improvement on last time, when I hit the side of the track hard enough to come out of the cart and slide to a stop on the dirt.
Best Day Ever!

And there’s the view.

They’ve got a lot of mountain bike … paraphenalia? … there too. Tracks I’d be hesitant about doing on foot were visible from the gondola which takes you up the mountain, and from the chairlifts which take you back to the top of the luge runs.
Saw the occasional mountain biker on the trails, and many more riding the gondola back up, so I’m not sure where they all went. According to a couple of staff members I talked to on the ride down, there aren’t as many stretcher/airlift rescues as you’d expect.

The staff members also mentioned a very professional luge-cart rustling operation which had been going on, now broken up by Police. None of us could work out why anyone would steal the things; The only work on very smooth concrete and significant slopes, so they’d be bugger-all use to anyone other than a luge operation.

I’d taken a municipal bus out there, but walked back, pausing to take a picture of course;

Quite by accident, I found the end of the line in Rotorua.

There is an operation running little two-person railcars on what used to be the rail line into Rotorua.
Not sure why there’s no train running to a major tourist centre, but there isn’t.

And that was Rotorua.

The bus arrived late, which wouldn’t have been an issue if there hadn’t been a plan for folks to come & pick me up from the drop-off in Tauranga. It all worked out OK, thanks to the wonder of cellphones, a Dutch chap whose daughter was on the bus & giving estimates of lateness, and some guesswork on my part as to when “about fifteen minutes out” was in a town I’d not been to in decades.

This is somewhere between a placeholder and a memory-jogger.
Funny comments, pictures, and witticisms will be added later.
ok, so I lied about the funny. and the witty.

This really starts with the getting there, which was not half the fun.
I mean, it wasn’t bad, though the bus did end up arriving late; It’s just that the ratio seems off in this case. I’d put it at no more than a twentieth of the fun, and most of that is down to a seatmate’s increasingly-frantic parents blowing up his phone.

I took ManaBus from Auckland to Taupo, because … Well, they’re cheap, and the last time I used them they gave me an Easter Egg.

They were not what you’d call organised at the bus stop. A chaotic shambles would be closer to the mark.
One increasingly-annoyed driver trying to check people on, and deal with baggage, and explain where this bus was going, and that that bus was taking the same route because there were a lot of passengers, … What they needed was more people, or maybe a sign.
Eventually bags and people got loaded, though there was a lot of confusion and concern in the crowd; Some people heard bits of the information, there was no-one to ask other than the driver, and he’d hit “I’ve already announced that” mode and was being passive-aggressive about it.
Apart from the bit where he decided that a camo-covered thing which was probably a tent, and was handed to him by someone of West Asian or Middle-Eastern appearance, was the perfect opportunity to make ‘jokes’ about the person being a terrorist. Really, a class act all around.

When I got to Taupo, I wrote this;

There may come a day when I will consider the calendar in a broader context when making travel plans, and make note of public holidays.
And there may come a day when travel through Auckland on a Friday before a long weekend by way of the roading network runs free and clear, unhindered by construction works, accidents, or thousands of people leaving work early in a futile attempt to avoid the crowds.

And the day may come that the City, and indeed the Country, possesses a public transport system worthy of the name, and people eschew their cars, traveling by train or light rail to their well-deserved vacations.

But it was not this day.

Yeah, there was traffic, and we got in a bit late, and the guy next to me made the mistake of telling the parent who was collecting him, and the parent back in Auckland, that this was happening.
They then constantly texted and called him for the next hour, asking for updates, and ‘are you there yet’, and so on.

Given that this is stop one of <<insert number here>>, I went with the easy option and stayed at the Great Lake Motel, where I’d stayed once before, back in 2009, before Trailwalker.

I’m going to work my way up to a bed in a dorm in a backpacker’s hostel, because I don’t really know whether I can do that sort of travel.

I didn’t have much of an agenda for Taupo, and this is borne out, I think, in what I did.
Not much.

I mooched about.
I looked at the pretty scenery.

Cloud-Wrapped Hills Above Taupo

View across Lake Taupo, hopefully towards Ruapehu/Tongariro/Ngaruhoe

I had a go at doing laundry, and went for a wander to find a laudromat.
Sadly, I forgot to get anything in the laundry liquid department on my way there, and I’d missed the line on the flyer which said “Self-Service On Weekends”, so getting some there was right out.
Going to chalk that one up to a Learning Experience, but it was still a nice enough walk, and I did acquire some emergency travel laundry supplies on the way back.

Traveling, Hopefully Non-Leaking, Laundry Supplies

I saw Kung Fu Panda 3 and Zootopia.
(as it happens, at the same movie theatre at which I’d seen the original Kung Fu Panda – we’d been snowboarding in Ohakune, and the weather was crap, so we came to Taupo & went to the movies. also saw Get Smart that day)

Monday was ANZAC Day, and I woke up early enough to attend the Dawn Service, so I did.

Dawn on ANZAC Day in Taupo

The weather cleared up for the occasion, so things were both Scenic & Bloody Cold.
I am not regretting that Merino Base Layer long-sleeved thing.

Taupo Cenotaph, Decorated For ANZAC Day

View Across Lake Taupo on a cold, clear day

It doesn’t show up in this picture, or any of the others I took, but I think I could see a vent on what I’m assuming is Tongariro.
I think.
Could have been an oddly-vertical cloud.

I also wandered along the riverside for a bit while the sun was shining, which, again, was full of scenic prettiness.

Things I Learned
I went with the advice of a friend, and got packing cubes to make the whole clothes thing more manageable.
On various US trips, there were enough clothing items of each sort that they formed their own City-States in my suitcase, jealously guarding their own territory from interloping socks and marauding shirts, and only rarely fraternising. This wasn’t going to work in a backpack with an 8-day supply of everything.

Version One of the scheme was, I think, a good try; The mesh bag which came with the bag for shirts, a couple of small mesh-top packing ‘cubes’ for socks & underwears.†
It worked OK, but involves more faffing about than I’d like.

Version Two involves a dry-bag of the same size as my designated laundry bag, though a different colour (green for dirty laundry, orange for clean clothing, and I’m not sure what the sectarian implications of that are), with all of the shirts, socks, & underwears‡ in the one bag.

† Not a typo.
‡ Totally deliberate.

I had a look at various travel & backpacking sites, forums, & YouTube channels, to get an idea of what approaches to laundry while travelling are out there.

My previous approach of “I’ll take enough stuff that I don’t need to do laundry” won’t work with what I have planned, so it comes down to how many ‘days’ of clothing to take.
Some folks advocate for a very low number, to minimise the amount of stuff being lugged around.
I know someone who does conventions with three changes of clothes, so that one can be worn, one is ironed & ready to wear, and the other is drying in the bathroom of the hotel, having been washed in the sink.

I’d had the idea that I could try a couple of weeks worth of clothes, and if it turned out that this was too many, I’d figure it out in New Zealand, so I could just post the excess home. Wasn’t sure what 14 days of stuff would look like, so I got out the pack and did a test with 7 shirts/socks/underwears.
Figured I’d then add another 7.

Well, that answered the 7 or 14 question, didn’t it?
Things could be stuffed down more, but not a whole lot more, and doubling the amount would just about fill the central volume of the pack. There’s an extra bit at the bottom, and a top compartment, but … It doesn’t seem like the best move to fill almost the entire volume with clothing.

All in all, a good result, I think, and it fits in with this very valuable piece of advice;

Auckland to London via Dubai, then London to Chicago, then Chicago to London via Iceland

Time for an update.
I’ve been working on travel plans, which is, I suspect, another way of saying that I’ve been procrastinating and not actually booking anything, as is the custom among my people.

Booked some flights and a hotel yesterday, so I think it’s past time that I announced what the hell the plan, if it can be said to be one, actually is. I’ve put a map up there, from the nice folks at www.greatcirclemapper.net, mostly because I wanted one.

Tried to do it in PowerPoint, which annoyed me, GIMP, which annoyed me in different ways, and MS Paint, which … had a certain “We’ll Put This On The Refrigerator, Little Billy” charm to it.

Here’s the plan;

• March 31st – Move into the spare room at House Needs-A-Name
  I aim to be packed up, my stuff reduced to what can feasibly fit into a backpack (and maybe a daypack too, we’ll see how that goes) by the end of this month.
  That means that the storage unit will be downsized (doing that on Thursday); the furniture sold, donated, or abandoned in the woods to fend for itself; and personal stuff either stored, trashed, or given away.
  Administrative things would be nice to sort out in that timeframe too, but I have a little bit more wiggle room there, thanks to, …
• April & May – Sort out remaining stuff, then go see the South Island
  The only bit of the South Island I’ve seen is Christchurch, and, well, they’ve redecorated since then.
  The plan is to have no plan, and to travel based on “Where Do I Want To Go Next”, with a side order of “Can I Find A Backpacker Hostel With Space For Me”.
  I’m looking at this as part tourism & part dry-run of backpack & hostel travel; If it turns out that I’m carrying to much, or the wrong stuff, or I just really really hate it, better to know while I’m still in New Zealand and can alter the plan.
  Assuming I don’t throw in the microfibre tramping towel, these travels would lead to, …
• June 2nd – Au Contraire 2016, the NZ National Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention, in Wellington
  The convention runs from the 3rd to the 5th, but I’m getting there the day before.
  Well, I have a hotel booking for the day before, so I certainly intend to get there the day before, and stay a day or so afterwards, so as to catch up with Wellington folks before …
• June 7th – Fly back to Auckland
  I’m beginning to worry that these lead-on things are getting old, or at least annoying.
  Back in Auckland, for a last chance to sort out & fine tune anything which needs it, see the parents, see the Auckland folks, probably do some laundry, pick up some foreign money, and then head for the airport, because …
• June 13th – Fly to Dubai, arriving on the 14th
  Emirates turned out to be a pretty cheap option, and they have that ridiculous 17+ hour direct flight from Auckland to Dubai. I’ll miss out on the delightful experience of people arguing with Australian Customs Officers over duty free booze & bottle sizes (the limits are different over there), and I made sure to book an aisle seat.
  Did look at bulkhead & exit row, but the few unbooked seats were tagged as “if there’s a family with infants, we’ll probably move you”, so I went with middle-of-the-section side-block aisle.
  Because there’s no damn way I will be wanting to get back on, or even look at, a plane after 17+ hours in one, …
• June 14th & 15th – Dubai
  Found a hotel near a metro station & not too far from things I might find interesting, and my plane gets in before 6am, so that gives me basically two days & two nights in Dubai.
  Hilariously, it’ll be during Ramadan, to really maximise that culture shock.
  Worst case, it’ll be devoid of life, explosively hot & humid, everything will be closed, and I’ll spend my time in the hotel enjoying air-con, retreating to my room to eat & drink during daylight hours, and annoying everyone with increasingly inane Facebook posts. And that doesn’t sound so bad.
  Best case, Ramadan will be an extra layer on top of a place which is already trying to mix tradition with … modernity? conspicuous capitalism? … , and it’ll be filled to bursting with interesting things to ask dumb questions about.
  Plus I’ll try to catch up with a friend/coworker who’s based there, which will be fun.
• June 16th – Fly to London
  Went with the window seat option here; It’s only an 8-hour flight, in daylight, and it’s mostly over land, so there’ll be something to look at.
• The Rest of June, plus July – Probably the UK, or more accurately, Great Britain
  We’re back to planning to have no plan for this bit.
  I’m going to book accommodation for the first few days, and hilariously enough, the hotel I stayed at for the London WorldCon compares favourably with a private room in a hostel, and with many of the AirBnB options. Probably because it’s in the Docklands, which isn’t a dealbreaker for me; The Underground holds few fears for me, and I found my Oyster Card from 2014 yesterday, so it’s a 2-3 train trip, which isn’t that big a deal.
  Beyond that, ramblings as I feel like it, hopefully visiting a friend who lives in Essex, hopefully visiting another friend who might be rampaging around Edinburgh, and generally wallowing in tourism & trying not to end up working in a pub which caters exclusively to New Zealanders & Australians on their OE.
  In retrospect, joining the Kiwis In London Facebook community could be seen as being counterproductive on that particular point.
• July 30th, or possibly 31st – Fly to Chicago, then get to Indianapolis
  Which date I leave on, and indeed arrive on, depends on the airline & the route. IcelandAir do some cheap flights, but some of them involve at 17 hour layover at Keflavík, which sounds like no sort of fun I’ve ever heard of.
  Aer Lingus, via Dublin, seem reasonable, though I’m still struggling to tell the difference between airlines which are low cost & honest about it, and those which are low cost and will screw you every chance they get.
  Regardless of the route, the plan is to be in Chicago on the 31st, so that I can get to Indianapolis for the 2nd of August, for Gen Con. There may be a road trip with some friends from Chicago, or it might turn out that another flight is a better idea, depending on how their plans/jobs go.
  I did look at the train options, but the arrival times are … suboptimal. Midnight is an annoying time to arrive, ’cause it’d feel like a waste to have a hotel room, and I don’t know that a hotel would be entirely keen on someone turning up at midnight, asking to store a bag, and then chillaxing/sleeping in the lobby for 12-14 hours.
• August 2nd-9th – Gen Con and related events
  Gen Con nominally runs from the 4th to the 7th, but Day Zero is the 3rd, and that’s still a pretty big part of the thing, as is the day after, on the 8th, when people pack up to go, and the whole thing is dismantled.
• August, September, and some of October – Wombling About In The USA
  Same routine as with NZ & the UK; Go see some things, stay in places as long as they interest me, then move on when they don’t. Ideally, visit some folks along the way, go to local conventions if the timing works out & the event interests me, that sort of thing.
  The Visa Waiver Program allows for up to 90 days, which would take me out to the end of October, but I figure setting a limit of 80 days gives me some wiggle room for things not going according to plan, and it might make the Customs & Border Protection folks happy to see that I’m not running out the clock to the last possible minute. I also plan to have my exit flight booked before I arrive, so that I can prove that I plan to leave, and to make it an easily-changed flight, in case I run out of money, energy, or interest in seeing another bloody scenic wonder.
  Speaking of exit flights, leaving from Chicago makes a kind of sense to me, as I know some folks in the general area. And in adjacent states. And states adjacent to those states. Which, with luck, lets me catch up with them before flying out to …
• Iceland!
  IcelandAir will not charge you any extra for a stopover of up to 7 days if your flight with them goes through Keflavík, so I thought I’d take advantage of that. Should probably pick up a “How Not To Sound Like An Idiot In Icelandic” guide to kill time during the US portion of the trip; I know that most folks there speak English, but it’d be nice to be able to pronounce things, and read the signs.
  As for what to do there? It’s Iceland, I’m sure I can find something entertaining & expensive. That thing where they give you a dry-suit and a snorkel, then point you at a Continental Rift, has a certain appeal. (There’s also a SCUBA option, but I am barred from that on medical grounds, so snorkel is the way to go)
• Back to London
  Well, it doesn’t have to be London, but it’s an air-travel hub for a reason.
  By this point it’ll be towards the end of October, and I’ll have been traveling for … counts on fingers … somewhere between six and seven months. That’s a long damn time, and it seems an excellent point to pause, take stock, and figure out what the next step is.
  It’s certainly a fine time to stop outlining the Grand Plan; I have no idea what state I’ll be in by then, what my finances will look like, and whether I’ll want to continue wandering, find some short-term contract work, find a longer-term job, …, could be anything.

And that’s the plan, such as it is.

There are a lot of unknowns here.
I’ve never traveled without a detailed plan before; I don’t know if I can do that, let alone whether I like it.
I’ve not spent a lot of time in Backpacker Hostels, so that’s a new thing.
The spine is an issue, but that’s what Travel Insurance with Medical Cover is for; That bit worries me the least.

There are questions too.
What to see & do in the UK, and in the USA?
Iceland?

And perhaps the most important question, what to call any Blog, Podcast, or YouTube channel, if I find myself wanting to do reports from the road?
I’d been thinking of The Wandering Monster, which was suggested by one of the FlatLords, but it turns out that there’s already a games publishing company who use that name, so it’s too close for comfort. It’s a pity, I’d thought about getting a dinosaur onesie and making that part of the theme.
Wilderness Encounters, while a solid gaming reference, sounds like a dogging group who meet in a forest, and I think they’d be disappointed by the actual content. Wilderness Adventures has the same problem, and, to be honest, I’m not that adventurous.

If anyone has an idea, I’d love to hear it.

This is what it looks like when I say “Fuck It” and do the map by hand in MS Paint