After an 8-day long visit with my dear old friend DaveG in Kansas City, Missouri, I am finally ready for my trip. I leave for Chicago at 7:43 in the morning via Amtrak, am meeting up with some friends in Chicago for lunch, and then head to Chicago O'Hare Airport in the evening for the first leg of my trip – a flight to Bangkok, Thailand by way of Taipei, Taiwan.
 Everything laid out and getting ready to be packed up
Being quite the world traveler himself, Dave had a number of little bags that he was able to let me borrow to make my trip considerably more organized. A little bag for socks and underwear, another one for pills and medicine, another for electronics, etc.
 Condensed down into the smaller packing bags
Ultimately I am bringing two bags with me. One of them is my actual backpacking pack, a beautiful new Osprey X-58 that I got from REI. It's considerably larger than I actually need for all of my stuff, but there is a reason for this that I will come to. The other bag is a smaller CamelBak that Dave actually traded me for the Timbuk2 that I was originally planning to bring. The smaller one is intended to hold my food, computer, and electronics – the items that I never check in. The larger Osprey holds all of my clothes, medicine, toiletries (except for my toothbrush as you never know when you'll need it). Once I clear customs in Thailand, my plan is to pack the CamelBak inside of the Osprey. That's why I got one that has extra space in it. Once I am situated in my hostile in Bangkok, I will reduce the CamelBak to just the bare necessities that I want to have while exploring the city.
 ...and finally down into just these two bags
This will mostly be limited to my water, camera, wallet, and copies of my identification just in case something should happen. I am sure that I'll wind up purging a few items a long the way, but after experimenting with all sorts of configurations (and having done this many times in the past), I'm pretty sure that I have a good setup. I guess I will find out tomorrow on my way!
 And for my final trick, the smaller bag goes into the larger bag
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