Talking About Shirts

I’m always hot. Always dehydrated.

Oh sure, I drink water. I drink loads of bottled water constantly. I take a big bottle of water on the plane and always have a bottle of spring water with me once I get there. The bottle-holding pockets on the sides of backpacks are useless, by the way. They won’t hold the litre-sized plastic bottles that are sold overseas, the mesh pockets are far too small. (Yo! Pack designers in St. Louis: are you listening?)

One year I took along some fancy-schmancy travel shirts on a trip to Turkey. The expensive ones with the wicking finish. Hydrophilic and all that. Thought that I was gonna die. I tossed them at the end of the trip. What an over-hyped piece of junk they were.

Now I use cheap, woven, short sleeve, cotton shirts. I buy a few new ones before my trip so that I look halfway presentable, then those become “gardening shirts” when I return.

I usually bring along ones from Columbia, REI or Cabelas. Cheap ones.

I used to bring along long-sleeve shirts, but I gave that up too. Short-sleeve shirts take up less room in the pack and besides, I got tired of rolling up my sleeves, being the lazy git that I am.

Mostly this is fine, when I travel in temperate climates, it is hot anyway and I am sweating like a pig.

But even when I travel in the UK (certainly not, by any stretch of the imagination, a temperate climate) I carry along short sleeve shirts. And even when I did Prague in February, (when the air fares were really cheap) I used short sleeve shirts.

Buildings in Europe, in my experience, use central heating which is either on or off. Mostly on. On in a big way. We are talking 30 degrees Celsius, which even in Fahrenheit is too damn hot. Apparantly, opening a window for fresh air is a major offence in the EU.

Good thing I have my cheap, short sleeve, cotton shirts.

Next week: I talk about frilly underwear