This last hectic week of work I was counting down the days. I had planned to pack everything by Wednesday or Thursday but didn't have a spare hour until Saturday morning. Now I'm writing this on Sunday, with all my gear laid out in front of me and I realise that starting tomorrow I'm really flying halfway around the world and setting off to cycle for three months.

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Rachael AndersonThat’s a lot of stuff!
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We got some big mountain bike boxes from a bike shop next door so they'll do us well. I got some 25mm tubing from Bunnings that I cut to length so we can put our thru-axles thru, hoping to protect the forks from getting crushed. My cheap wood saw didn't like to cut through the tubing but the end result was fine. A bit of cardboard bracing here and there and some foam for padding and our bikes are boxed.

Our bikes fit quite nicely in these huge boxes. I had to remove my front rack and saddle but nothing else, even kept both mudguards on. After packing the bike boxes weigh in at about 22kg each, so we're toe-ing the line for the Air NZ weight allowance...

We're taking along a couple folding 70L duffels courtesy of the luxury travel section in Kmart.  We can fit 2 big Ortliebs and 1 small in each, so we can just about fit all our gear in them. It should make it a bit easier to take our luggage on the trains down the East Coast. We each have packable backpacks for carry-on and for convenience in the US. My total gear weight was 26kg. Plenty of weight to carry thousands of hilly kilometres.

I found out just a week or so ago that my brother Scott, and his partner and baby are both flying out of Christchurch on Monday at around the same time as us. They're flying from the International Terminal where we're flying domestic first but it will be good to see them off too. All 3 Parkinson brothers are going to be on different continents all over the world for a couple weeks.

Natalie and I tried to transition to Eastern Daylight time over the last week or so, getting up 30 minutes to an hour earlier each day. We didn't quite make it all the way but we knocked off a few days of jet lag recovery I bet. I'm writing this at 11:30 pm NZ time though, so we screwed it up on the last day. Overall I feel prepared, now the only thing left to do is relax and get ready to start riding. Everything is falling into place and I can't wait to share the adventure with all of you. Wish us luck!