Packing - Part 2

I have a few packing quirks. Yea, more stuff, so sue me.

First, I always bring more reading material than I’m likely to finish. That’s because years ago I ran out of books in Mexico when, instead of sightseeing or sitting on the beach, we were stuck in a hotel for 4 days while my traveling companion (aka husband) tried to get over Montezuma’s Revenge. The only thing that saved my sanity was discovering a tiny hostel with a take-a-book-leave-a-book exchange. This is how I got, and read, all of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, a fact that astonishes me to this day.

So, I’m bringing 2 books (they’re light!) and a loaded Kindle. Among many classics, it has all of Henry James on it. I should be OK.

My other packing quirk: I love to knit on planes. For me, it’s the perfect way to spend the hours when there’s nothing else to do besides watching crummy movies on a credit card-sized screen. Long international flights are perfect for knitting, except maybe in Kenya, where my knitting needles were deemed a security violation and confiscated (“they seem sharp.”) Here’s hoping Air China and Thai Airways will let me bring them on, along with two bulky balls of yarn.

Then there’s eyewear. I’m practically blind, so I travel with more than one set of contact lenses, a small bottle of saline solution for carry-on, a bigger one in checked luggage, a pair of glasses, a pair of reading glasses, and of course sunglasses, since in addition to being practically blind, my eyes are sensitive to light.

Much of this stuff -- books, knitting, eyewear -- lands in my carry-on luggage because you just have to be able to see, read and knit while travelling. There’s no way around it.

Which is a long way of explaining why, in addition to a suitcase, I will be taking a sizeable carry-on bag for an 11 day-long trip, 4 days of which are sitting on airplanes.