Planning for a three month backpacking trip in Asia is a little daunting. Not only do I have to rethink all of my normal expectations of daily life and make all the normal provisions any long-term international traveler must -- passports, visas, tickets, finances, and what to do with my apartment -- I am, as previously professed, a geek.

So, on top of everything else, I'm obsessing about what gear I should take with me.

I imagine a reasonable person's approach would be to take a couple changes of normal clothes, get a decent pack on the cheap at REI's used gear sale, and maybe pick up a decent compact camera. But not me. Oh, no, not me.

This has been an ongoing drama for me, but for the purposes of this post let's condense it down to a single item, just to give you a cross-section of my thought process.

Shoes.

I've decided I'm going to need two pairs of shoes. One will be a pair of sandals, which is easy -- I'll just take my old flip-flops.

The second pair is tougher. If all goes according to plan, my trip will range from backpacking along the Great Wall in China and slogging through jungles in Southeast Asia, to hitting up restaurants and bars in Hong Kong and Japan. So ideally, I'll have a pair of shoes that can handle rough terrain, wet weather, and not look too out of place in a decent bar.

So I waffle for days, asking people for advice, researching various models and types on the Internet, and basically going between taking my trail runners (which aren't waterproof, but look okay and are super comfortable), buying a pair of waterproof ones (which are often priced well over $100 and -- admittedly less often -- look like a bag of smashed assholes), or just going "fuck it" and getting trashed so I can stop thinking about it.

Now, expand this process to include the rest of my kit -- laptop, cameras, wallet/money belt, shirts, pants, socks, towels, and underwear -- towels and underwear, for fuck's sake -- and you can kind of see the particular brand of lunacy with which I'm afflicted.

If my previous behavior is any indication, this will end in one of two ways.

First, I will become thoroughly disgusted with the whole process and revert to my Asian budget-conscious roots. Consequently, I'll just take what I already own, and be damned to the consequences to my feet, post-shower drying-off capabilities, or taint funk.

Second, I will find the idea of venturing into a series of developing countries without three pairs of high-tech quick-drying anti-microbial boxers unbearable, and will promptly spend a hundred bucks on them.

So, to any rural Cambodians who might be reading this on their nonexistent computers and internet link, let it be known: if you see me wandering through your neck of the world, it is not an impossibility that my dirty underwear will be worth enough to feed your village for a week.

You might have trouble finding a buyer, though.