Fifty pounds of flour and a Kindle

There's no store on the island I shop online; heck I browse online, especially on eBay.

What isn't on eBay? I found my favorite boots (no longer in production) and bought a slightly used pair for $20.00 plus shipping ($230.00 new).

I found the last two rucksacks (daypacks) that I've owned: covering nearly thirty years of daily use. I had to retire my old Eddie Bauer rucksack when it was no longer waterproof; the Gregory Apex is semi-retired because the zipper pops open. I'm tempted to buy the Eddie Bauer pack because it was my all-time favorite, but I know my  Osprey Talon 11 is a superior daypack. Besides, I don't carry a daypack around every day like I did in town.

I usually don't have anything I need to carry on the island. No wallet, checkbook, keys or phone. It's quite different when I have to go off-island. We all have a mantra: wallet-keys-phone. That's the bare minimum. If I forget the garbage and recycling I can get to it next time: three months of garbage and recycling for is two small bags. I also have to find the town underwear and hopefully clothes that aren't too terribly muddy.

Remember, we live on an island with no ferry service: bringing a car back and forth is $300 a pop on the barge. Some of the summer residents load up their trucks for the season and barge it over, then barge out with their garbage at the end of the season.

Full-time residents keep a car in town and one on the island; we get a lot of exercise lugging our supplies. For me it's supplies from the store to the truck, from the truck down the dock to the boat, from the boat (often rowed in via dinghy) up the beach to the trail, up the trail to the house... and finally I get to put everything away. Fifty pounds of dog food, fifty pounds of rice, you get the idea. On the up side, I only got to town four or five times a year.

eBooks
Well, it's come to this -- yesterday I didn't buy several books because they weren't available as eBooks. Maybe I saved myself a few dollars, and maybe I really didn't need the books (ha!) but I'm definitely falling prey to the "have it now" syndrome. Or maybe not, since we can wait weeks for "next day" UPS. (If the runway is a mudhole, the planes won't land. Our packages pile up in a warehouse eight-ten  miles by air or eighteen-twenty miles by water from us. Even our mail occasionally goes awry because we have no streets or street addresses.

Life on an island...