With eight days to go the packing is almost done. I had hoped to take one large and one small suitcase along with the camera bag and another smaller bag to hold the paperwork. It was close but did not happen. I had the laptop computer and its accessories along with other things in the small suitcase but it started to overflow so the messenger bag I’ll be taking on the India excursion came out and filled up leaving a few things still “needed” unpacked. How to solve?
One of the early decisions was to take the smaller tripod for one purpose: on January 31st there will be a triple moon event where there is a super moon, blue moon, and full lunar eclipse at the same time and we’ll be at the International Date Line at that time. So, if the sky is clear we’ll be in a perfect place to get good pictures of the event. Thus the tripod for that purpose alone.
Back to packing, thinking about the event and the fact that we’ll be at sea during the triple moon the tripod actually may not be so much help as the ship will be moving and the ocean likely will be moving so the stable platform the tripod would demand likely will not exist. So, an attempt was made to repack the smaller suitcase without the tripod.
As the tripod was long and thin and the rest of the stuff was wide and bulky the repack did not work and there was still a pile of things to take that the small suitcase had no room for so the moving platform argument has now come to the front and the living room floor has my other larger suitcase open and mostly packed and the leftover pile has diminished to zero. I’ll even have a bit of room to take a couple more shirts (which I may need as many places I’m going will be hot and likely in need of multiple shirts per day).
Answer: Tripod stays home (which means I’ll likely need it 🙂 ).