Leaving in a few months

Time starts to catch up pretty quick again, my trip to New Zealand is only about two months away. In that time I still have to manage a pretty hard deadline from work, complete my gear, and clean my bike ;-).
It is now also time to see if I do have all the gear I want to take, and if it actually fits in all my bags. The most heavy part of my entire luggage will be my bike, I really hope that I can clean it out that much that it fits inside a box and that the weight is below 20kg. As the tires (Schwalbe Marathon XR 57-559) on the bike already weigh about 0.8kg each, I might put them in my regular check-in luggage (advantage of foldable tires). But those details will be managed during the Christmas holiday.

For now my mind is set to working my butt off to finish a pilot-project with a working prototype to create and order documents online, finding my own place in Zwolle, and getting the last items for my trip. Oh yeah, also finding some time to actually ride some long miles on my bike, to get in shape for cycling each day in New Zealand. And no, I am actually not that busy, still have quite some time to actually just sit at my computer at home, or watching TV in the living room. It was a lot busier in the last months working on my thesis. It's currently pretty laid back actually :).

Gear wise I think that I have almost everything except a few items, such as a foldable seat (Tatteljee Stele), a pair of light, waterproof hiking shoes, and maybe a Trangia cooking set. A seat would be an extremely useful item to add to my collection of camping gear, until now I have been improvising this with trees and sleeping mats, but an actual chair would be nice.
And "to take a hike" in New Zealand I would like to have a couple of sturdy shoes, that can take me across some mountains and national parks, and be comfortable to wear them for long hours in an airplane. My current shoes are either too heavy, or not up for the job of hiking up a mountain.
But then, why a Trangia set, you do already have a Coleman stove?! That's easy, I will not be able to let my Coleman stove pass customs, as it will have to be entirely empty and look like its new .. well, mine isn't. And I have thought about another lightweight solution, and that is a Trangia set with a cooking pan and one to bake, just large enough for two persons (plan for the future ;-) ). Trangias also burn quite clean, as they use spirits (or alcohol), instead of petrol.

One of the main reasons for me to go to New Zealand, besides the apparent reason that my sis used to work there (read some of my first posts), is the rugged outdoors that cannot be found in the Netherlands. As an aspiring photographer of outdoor activities I do like to take loads of photos and not have to worry about storage. Therefore I'll take a whole stack of about 40GB worth of Sandisk Ultra II and Extreme (III) CompactFlash cards with me, and a backup unit to create a copy/backup of the cards once full. Everything is stored in waterproof (submersible) bags or cases, such as the Gepe Card Safe Extreme memory card cases.
I am actually still in doubt whether to take a small SD camcorder (such as the Canon FS200) with me for those moments where still images just don't cut it. It would be a great learning opportunity to just let still images tell the story of my trip, and maybe have some sound recorder for sounds that I don't want to miss. Some food for thought ...