As a “fun” exercise today, I laid out all of our panniers on the living room rug and asked Amanda to pack her bags. Having just finished a 2-week tour, I had a really good idea of what I needed to pack. I was therefore surprised when Amanda was done packing her bags shortly thereafter.
“What else?” Amanda asked.
“What do you mean what else?” I answered.
“I have two empty panniers still, and you have one empty pannier”, she pointed out.
“Well, that’s good. We’ll need room for food, and maybe we can get some cats to keep in another empty one”. I smirked, and turned my attention to the remnants of our apartment. Everything in our 600 square-foot apartment had suddenly become redundant. The TV, stereo, clothing, filed paperwork, laptops, kitchen items, bike parts, and our car. It all must go. Sometime between now and when we leave.
Technically, we could roll our bikes out the door this afternoon and never look back. That would be the easiest and least-stressful decision so far as how to dispose of the last 10 years of our life together. Yet, there are still preparations to be made on how to spend the next 10. All I know is that everything must go.