Free Up the Down Volcano (Kindle Single) by Sloane Crosley

I am told that Ecuador is graced with all four seasons in the course of a single day, and so I pack for none. Instead I stuff a bikini and a fleece vest into the pocket of negative space that appears as I zip my bag shut. A sense of satisfaction washes over me as I force-feed nylon straps through plastic teeth. There’s no reason for me to feel satisfied. You need many more items than the ones I have chosen for a day in Malibu or a circumnavigation of Greenland. But I am done with old habits. I have spent my whole life escorting aspirational accessories around the globe as if they were children on a disastrous family trip.
    “You wanted to see Miami?” I put my straw hat on a glass coffee table where it will stay untouched until I repack it. “There, now you’ve seen it.”
    My aversion to over-packing and its uptight cousin, over-planning, stems from the belief that neither tendency is a fake problem. These are not amusing tics. They are not superfluous reflections on the personality of the packer, but profound ones. They suggest a dubiousness of other lifestyles (racist), a conviction that the world won’t have what you need (princess), and a lack of faith that you’ll continue being human when it doesn’t ( misanthrope) . Plus, you’ll probably have to check your bags. And how hard is it, really? It’s just the one planet. I think by now we can all agree that the foundation of world travel goes something like “bring a cardigan.”
    Thusly armed with my symbolic tributes to a four-in-one climate, I lift my bag. I wince at the small weight, my bicep aching from yesterday’s visitors: a series of offensively long needles. I am going to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, because a small travel magazine based in San Francisco has told me to go there. And because they are paying me to do so. The last time I was sent anywhere and got cut a check for it, I went to Wichita Falls, Texas. I’m pretty pumped about South America.
    My mission is to wander around Quito for a few days, interact with locals and write about it. When I tell the editor I don’t speak Spanish, he thinks this will only make things funnier. When I say “for whom?” he pretends not to hear me.
    Because I am traveling courtesy of a sue-able upstart, I am advised to seek out multiple inoculations, including one for typhus. The magazine does not want anything resembling a Painted Veil situation on their hands. I am also encouraged to pick up a prescription for “one of the malaria pills” should I venture farther afield. It seems to me that if one is going to place oneself in an environment that warrants the swallowing of malaria pills, one should have a specific kind in mind.
    But let’s back up a tick: Malaria?
    Quito isn’t Tokyo, but it’s a major city. The quotidian equivalent of such precautions would have me being one of those people who Purell subway poles.
    “Is this really necessary?” I ask the editor, who points out how difficult things will be for me if I get sick and can’t communicate in the correct language.
    Few instances in my life have made me feel so tough as helping the Duane Reade pharmacist locate my pills while a line of people formed behind me. Chain store pharmacists put exactly as much effort into patient privacy as I do into packing.
    “What are we looking for, Hon?” she shouted over her shoulder, thumbing her way though a Rolodex of normal-people-problem creams.
    Until they invent a Libido Dampening syrup or a capsule for Being Too Darn Pretty, this will be the only time I’ll boomingly announce the contents of my envelope to all the land. The pills and the shots bolster my sense of adventure, my desire to take myself out for a spin. It’s as if I am dealing with extra minutes on a phone plan, not my immune system. Use it or lose it.
    This is not like me. I am a profoundly lazy person in real life. I won’t meet a friend at a location more than five blocks from my apartment if it’s too windy and the sidewalk