My last girlfriend called me up a few days ago to tell me she was in the hospital. This took the wind out of my sails as far as planning this bike tour goes. I've been very distracted lately and it's hard for me to make plans while I know she's in pain at the hospital. In the meantime, I've been working every day of the week and working towards finding a second job. I tried to get a job across the street at the hospital but they require formal training as a pharmacy technician before I can get a job. So instead of working across the street for a respectable establishment for $12.80/hour, I will need to work at a Walgreens, probably a few miles away for about $9/hour until I'm fully trained in. I won't tell them this at Walgreens, but I'm totally out of there once I am fully trained. If I have time tomorrow afternoon after work I'm gonna begin price-shopping for equipment. Today at work some customers brought in their Ortlieb panniers and I talked to them about the bags for about 10 minutes. The woman had been using them for six years and they looked brand new. They were waterproof, didn't have any zippers which could potentially break, was capable of having a strap attached for easy carrying, and snap onto the rack and come off easily. The woman did say that her heel hit the bag as she biked for a while but that might have to do with her having a shorter bike than mine or her using a mountain bike instead of a road bike. Anyway, I'm sold on that model based on what I'd heard from her. She was a huge fan. Now I just need to find out which store around her carries them for the cheapest...