Three weeks on the road- notes to self

Note to self- dont pack so damn much.
 While my backpack could have probably held more, I realize that 1 dress shirt and 1 less pair of pants would have sufficed. I deliberately did not bring jeans since they are heavy and take forever to dry after a good rainstorm- and we hit a few of those.
 Shoes are a pain in the ass, but there was an absolute need for everything I took. Rockports with corrective insoles covered me for much of the trip but while they were drying, cross trainers filled the void on parts of the road where Mephisto sandals would have shredded my feet. Flip flops for kayaking and really wet days on cobblestones rounded things out.
 Toys- Olympus E510. with wide angle zoom and telephoto have been my "go to" cameras for 6 years. Viewfinder when its is too bright to use the backscreen and multiple settings for various light conditions. 2 small backups- a FujiFinepix for general use- easily straps to waist and shoots 1020 video as well as Olympus waterproof- great for heavy rain and dumping into water when least expected,
 Everything backs up to an ASUS tablet with 64G of memory on board with a further backup to google's cloud storage.
Still fighting with cut and paste issues for blog updates when travelling on buses with no net services.Current word like programs seem to be missing cut and paste when transfering to other formats like blogger. And yes, while I do have some exacting standards for toys, there are other things I miss when being on the road.
 My accomodations need to be big enough for me and my bag to fit in the room simultaneously. The bathroom sink should not bruise my knees when I sit on the toilet. The A/C should not be "it worked fine for the last guest" nor should the TV have 5 german channels and 1 english. And please can it be BBC World news rather than CNN.
In Dubrovnik one channel offered a fixed camera view of the main street in the old city, complete with bats trying to bomb the camera at 11:30 at night- yes I was bored!!The only other option was a Kurasawa Samarai film spoken in Japanese and subtitled in Croation or a US reality show dubbed into the same!
I miss brocolli- had it once the entire trip. I did see a carrot on more than one occasion as well as several grilled peppers. I do even recall- or maybe it was a dream- a couple of sticks of asparagus in Budapest. Sadly I also recall daily doses of egg-plant. Eggplant has the texture of zuchini that has been left in the bottom of the vegetable compartment of the fridge for a month. like an old cucumber that explodes as it hits the side of the compost container!
 Potatoes are fine, but mixed with chard every effing night? You have to be kidding.
And yes, like most North Americans, I am an internet junkie, so it pisses me off that hotels promote "free" WiFi but dont actually make the effort to provide a service that is faster than "dial-up" Travel companions can be an asset or sometimes just an ass. The current group was sort of middle of the road with some really great people, and some not so great.For the sake of peace and quite, that is as much as I will say on the subject.
A rough count tells me I have hit some 55 countries and a couple of hundred major cities in the course of my travels. I know people who have rarely left the province of Ontario and who consider a trip to Toronto an epic adventure.
 I think my philosophy on travel hangs somewhere between the lines attributed to Ghandi:" learn as thoughyou would live for ever, life as though you would die tomorrow." But I like the way Warren Zevon said it best " I'll sleep when I'm dead!"