Zen and the art of the planning of the packing

T minus 7 days! This is happening! In a week, the first batch of us fly out of Kansas City, Missouri, to officially launch the Fjørdgasm! Are we preparing? Yes! Are we packing? Yes! Are we carefully considering every inch of space? Yes!

Also, more exclamation marks! We are those people now! Check this out; this is how, in a surprise move, organized we are being!

Pro-level prep: We marked out the footprint of the roof box and the rear cargo space.

This is not an option. (Photo: Telegraph Herald)

Cramming six people into one vehicle for three weeks is a game of three-dimensional Tetris. And, if you're flying somewhere and then taking a road trip, that ups the stakes, because you don't have the option of figuring it out in the driveway at home and leaving the crap back in the garage that won't fit in the car. Stuff either flies with you or it doesn't, so let's get organizised!

The basics:

• Duffels. Suitcase, especially hard-sided suitcases, are a non-starter for a road trip like this. You need everything to be squishable. Cargo areas, trunks, and roofboxes don't flex, so your luggage needs to.* Mine is a roll-top, waterproof motorcycle bag from Firstgear, because I ride a motorcycle and the thing has all sorts of D-ring attachment points for strapping and I'm rough on my gear and, pro tip, Norway gets wet. A lot. Roll-top anything is always a good choice if you're headed that way.
• Cooler. Let's be honest here: Eating out in Norway is seriously expensive. Groceries, on the other hand, might be a bit more than in the States, but especially staples like bread, spreads and sliced meats, milk, cheese, and potatoes are reasonable. Bring a cooler so you can keep yourself stocked up on food. The one you see above, an RTIC Soft Pack 40 in festive "seafoam" green to match our destination, is road-trip friendly: It's soft sided, so you can squeeze other luggage in around it, and we can check it in as luggage for the flights to and from Norway. Bonus: We can stuff it with extras like towels, blankets, and even pillows, just like a small suitcase. Bonus the second: Half the price of a Yeti and just as good.
• Straps and more straps and tie-downs and also bungees. You can never have enough straps. Strap things to the roof rack. Strap things to other things, then strap those strapped things together in the back so they don't all fall out in a luggage avalanche when you open the hatch. Strap your straps.and
• Tents. We're bringing two, and as luck would have it those two both fit into an old SCUBA gear bag I have. So that's two bags in one bag, yay. One tent is a reliable old beater we already have. The other is a very special tent! The problem with where we're going is that the damn sun won't set. At all. Which is great fun unless you have a toddler who needs to sleep, or we all suffer. The solution is a light-tight tent, and there just aren't a lot of those around. As luck would have it, Coleman makes a couple — maybe even at the big manufacturing plant down the road from here in Gardner, Kansas. We're bringing a 6-person Sundome with “Dark Room Technology”, which gets nice and dark inside and turned out to be quite roomy. Thank you, Coleman.
• The Sportube. Oh, the Sportube. I love this thing. If you carry any kind of sports gear like skis, snowboards, or, in my case, spearfishing equipment, it's a life saver. It's hard sided, so I don't have to worry about anything bending or getting smashed. Even fully extended, it checks in like any other luggage, and it has a handle and wheels to tool around airports with it. Ours is the biggest, the Sportube Series 3. Along the back wall in my pic above you'll see what all goes in it:
  • Two pairs of long freediving fins.
  • Two full two-piece 7mm spearfishing suits.
  • Two masks and snorkels.
  • Two pair booties and gloves.
  • Two weight belts.
  • A spearfishing buoy with 20 meters of float line.
  • A 105 cm SEAC speargun with reel and two shafts.
  • Two fishing poles.
  Better yet, it'll strap to the roof rack and is reasonably aerodynamic.
• The backpack carrier. Mia didn't come with straps or a handle, and we're going hiking in some moderately rough terrain, which, if you're going to Norway, is pretty much part of the package. The soft front carriers are fine for the mall, but we need to get serious, so we're bringing a proper backpack carrier with a frame and waist strap. Much as Mia, who's now almost two and learned to walk at nine months, loves to run around, there are limits to her stamina and our patience**. When we hit that limit, she loves sitting in this thing, perched up high and ported around like the royal highness that she is. The Kelty Pathfinder is adjustable every which way and folds reasonably flat for the road.

So organized. So prepared. Next thing you know I'll turn into the kind of person who figures out the expenses on beforehand in an Excel spreadsheet. Which, shoot me.

We're not done, however! Once you get into the packing of the things inside the things, we've even done more preparation to keep things compact and crammable: Packing cubes and compression bags, electronics organizers for the action cam (yes, of course an action cam) and mounts, cables, chargers, adapters, extra batteries, SD cards, blips, blops, widgets, etc. and etc. More on that stuff later, because those are details, and that means there's a devil in there.

Now if I can convince my 17-year-old daughter not to bring a pageant's worth of cosmetics and hair care products, I'm pretty sure we'll all fit.

* Footnote the first: Yes, I considered roof bags, and those are flexible. They also collapse, so we could literally have checked one in as luggage. The ones I narrowed it down to were the 18 cubic feet version of Rightline Gear's Sport 3 Car Top Carrier, because 18 cu ft are a lot of room and because it has good ratings on ton of reviews, and Thule's Ranger Foldaway, which, though a little smaller at 16 cu ft and more expensive, looks more aerodynamic and is Thule, so you know it's going to be rock solid.

There are drawback to roof bags, though: (a) They sit on the roof. Our Volvo has a huge sun roof, and that glass, and the opening mechanism, were not designed to hold weight. We also didn't want the bottom of the bag to scratch the roof, which meant we'd have to buy a separate rubber mat to place under the bag. (b) There will be flapping. No matter how good the bag, I have the feear that at U.S. highway speeds there'd be flapping and vibration from straps and folds in the canvas. In Norway, where roads are twisty two-lanes and speed limits range from “glacial” to “leisurely” stroll, speed isn't as much of a problem, but we would want it to be useful here in the U.S., too.

Lots of people use roof bags with no complaints here in the U.S., so wind must not he a huge problem. What made the choice for me, though, was that Volvo's Overseas Delivery Program office in Gothenburg — which, folks, these people are seriously helpful — are setting us up with a Volvo-branded Thule roof box for the entire month at a cost of a few bucks. Problem solved, and we'll blend right in with the other Norwegians, who, as a nation, are the reigning world roof-box champions.

** Footnote the second: Not just patience but responsibility. Norway's natural scenery is an endless series of edges and drop-offs, ranging in pucker factor from bruise-worthy rocky shorelines to 600-meter (2,000 feet) Gaping Voids of Certain Death at Pulpit Rock (thanks, Slartibartfast, for that). When you have a toddler who loves to explore, you're going to want to restrain her somehow or else learn to live with abject terror. For example, we're going to the Runde Bird Island, which looks like this:

Sure, you guys relax. Meanwhile, I'm over here with a toddler who really wants to see what's over that edge there. (Photo: Visit Norway)

In places like that, yeah, I think we'll just go ahead and strap her in and carry her. If you're going with kids under, I don't know, five, I'd recommend you do the same, unless you have them on a harness and leash.