Gear: Cameras

During our travels out of the US we shot 12,000 photos mostly on our Olympus Stylus Tough 6020.  In Nepal we were kindly delivered a Sony NEX-5 by Julie.  Last, many of the best photos were shot by Ram with his Canon 5D SLR with professional grade lenses.  Ram also took up the shot quality by handing out at anchors or being in the party above on one multi-pitch.  A handful of other photos were taken from friends we met while traveling.

Our Olympus Stylus Tough 6020:  It has held up well for us well.  Climbing we wear it around our neck on a string which has worked well as it is easy to lift it up while belaying, turn it on, and shot a picture with only one hand.  If you need to throw out rope we just drop it and it hangs there on our neck.  It isn’t the lightest camera but has taken the bumps and bruises of climbing.  It is compact but I don’t like the charger it comes with has it plugs into the camera.  We had an old charger which worked with the batteries so we carried that.  It however failed miserably to keep up with the photo quality of Ram’s Canon 5D and after Thailand I was left desired a better photo quality so I looked into something for better photo quality.

Sony NEX-5:  While traveling we got a Sony NEX-5.  We got it with the 16 mm f2.8 pancake flake and 18 mm – 55 mm f3.5-5.6.  We carried this in Lowepro Munich 100 Camera Bag (Black) by Lowepro which is the perfect size for the camera, both lenses, and extra battery.  It did shoot much better photos and was more enjoyable to shoot while on tourist attractions.  Plus, it was great to have two cameras incase one had broken.

Mountain Project Rank

One of my favorite rock climbing websites is Mountain Project.  It is kind of a forum based climbing beta sites.  It a really useful site for beta, photos, descriptions, and reading peoples opinions about routes.  As we traveled I also started using it to record the climbs we did and in order to keep doing this I also had to create lots of routes, climbing sectors, areas, and even countries in the forum.  In all during the 150 days we were outside of the United States we climbed 234 pitches on 212 routes.

Mountain Project keeps score of your contributions so while we were traveling I kept track of my score for adding routes, areas, and pictures.  Here is how my ranking increased over time.

January 18: Rank about 4,000, Point 31

February 18; Rank about 2,000, Points 131

March 1; Rank 772, Points 473

March 19; Rank 333, Points 1,013

April 3; Rank  309, Points 1,084

April 4; Rank 242, Points 1,286

April 12; Rank 191, Points 1,681

June 10; Rank 191, Points 1,681

June 13; Rank 168, Points 1,848

June 14; Rank 146, Points 2,135

June 18; Rank 131, Points 2,310

June 19; Rank 112, Points 2,596

August 27; Rank 115, Points 2,637

August 28; Rank 70, Points 3,713

September 3; Rank 60, Points 3,918

Trip complete-Costs

Well the trip is complete we spent 180 days living out of a suitcase.  Anja has done telecommuting from hotel rooms, restaurants, coffee houses, McDonalds, bars, airports, trains, and buses.

Costs an estimate of our trip:

Air Travel: $8,500

Other travel (buses, trains, taxis, bikes, etc.): $2,000

Lodging: $6,500

Food: $5,600

Tours: $1,200

Total: $25,000

Probably there is about another $2,000-$5,000 in that depending on how you could some of the things we bought.  Here is our spreadsheet where we tracked costs.

Anja to Burlington (Day 172-186)

Anja headed to Burlington to spend a little time with her family.

She went hiking with her brother.



And kayaking with her mom.





She had a chicken souvlaki BBQ with her mom.





And dinner with Louise.

Ken to Lincoln (Day 172-180)

I headed to Nebraska to help them some with work on there house.

One project I tried to help with a rebuilding the fence.

We had Home Depot deliver my dad’s fencing.

We tried to get rolling on the fence project.

 

My folks dog cymbie injured her back.  Poor little dog.

We loaded up a truckload of stuff to move to Boulder.

After 180 days I’d returned to stuff and had more than just a suitcase so many choices of clothes.

North Carolina, Chapel Hill-Erika’s Wedding (Day 169,170, and 171)

We departed from New York from Long Island which meant we had to call a town car because you can’t call a cab there.  Weird.

We said goodbye to Ram at his terminal as he was flying home to LA and we were off to North Carolina.

We arrived in North Carolina for Erika’s wedding which what we had come home from Europe for.  The next day Kyle, Alexia, Analesse, and Caitlin all got in.

We all went to Erika’s folk house and swam with all the family.

Erika’s golden doodle Millie.

Erika’s wedding was great.

Erika’s side of the family.

The happy couple at the end of the big day.

New York, New York-Back in the USA (Day 167 & 168)

We’d chose to fly back to New York to stop and see Adam and Yumi who were now living there.

Yumi was home to greet us and soon gave us the big news that she was pregnant.  It was great to return to the us and we washed everything.  Strange things happen like walk up to an ATM and my mind trying to consider how much $300 is in what is going to come out of this machine.  Oh that right it’s $300.  Other great realization; I don’t have to carry my passport, if I encounter a police officer I’m likely to give him grief, and I can buy any food I want!

We were exhausted and just pretty much passed out.

When we woke up the day we grabbed some rock shoes and went to Central Park.

We found a rock and did some climbing.

Of course New York is a great place to return to after an international trip because you still don’t feel like you are back in the USA because so many people here do not speak English.

It’s great to be back.

Greece-Kalymnos-Athens (Day 166)

We got up early and headed to the Kos airport.

Nice views from the plane.

Patty, a friend we made canyoneering in Nepal who lives in Athens, picked us up from the airport.

She took us back to her house and made us an amazing lunch.

Stuff peppers.

Greek salad

And lamb shank.  Patty blew Sunrise out of the water.  It was amazing.

After lunch Patty took us the Acropolis.

Patty was way too gracious a host and didn’t want to let us pay for anything and even hired this tour guide to tell us about everything.

I guess the pending riots were playing in our favor as the place was almost empty.

We found our way into some museum but the museum of antiquities was closed.

We walked down and visited the Temple of Hephaestus.

I loved this site.  No one there and much better preserved than the Acropolis.

We did a little walking through Pathia and bought a little painting.

We got back to Patty’s at 10 pm and we had dinner.  We’d have to get up at 4 am.