Becoming mobiler with Sonar

My system is pretty immobile. Here are the relevant pieces of gear for this thread:
Dell Tower with M-Audio sound card
Midisport 2x2 midi box
Roland Rack Mount synth
Behringer basic-model mixer
Mic on mic stand
Yamaha full-size piano
Receiver
Big-ass Sennheiser headphones
Cables and plugs and mice and things
 
I may need to be living in Australia for a few months for work, and am figuring this is a great chance to finish my album finally. But I don't think I'm going to be planted in a hotel for months. I think I will be moved around to different locations a week at a time within the country. So I'm looking for ways to get more mobile with my studio setup. I'm not doing any guitars or anything, the mic is only used for vocals.
 
I have a fairly beefy laptop I can run Sonar on and could bring an external HD for Sonar projects. But it doesn't have the M-Audio sound card, and of course no slots for it. So how would that work? 
 
The Roland synth is old (late 90's I think), but I rely on it a lot still, so I can't leave that at home. I know that the memory it requires is nothing compared to what is available on my PC, and I wish I could wave a wand and turn the whole thing into a soft synth and not have to lug the box along. Also, if I bring that, I'm also bringing the external Midi interface.
 
And what about the keyboard? I can buy/borrow a tiny midi controller, but I've done that before and the octave switching drove me crazy, and whenever I needed to input actual piano parts, well, it was not fun...
 
And how can I record mic input without the mixer? 
 
In all, how do I go about paring down this setup so that I can take it down under?

 

ampfixer
Laptop and USB interface with Sonar. Leave the synth at home and use Z3ta+ to generate place holder lines. The mic will plug into the interface. The keyboard is the tough one. Not flight friendly. Other than that, everything should fit in your carry-on bag.

Could you elaborate a bit on the Z3ta+ solution? What do you mean by "place holder lines"? And what interface will the mic plug into, exactly? And the USB interface, is this a new sound card I'd need to buy?

All right, then, thanks! Maybe if I like the Z3ta sounds enough I can just keep them. I've never played with it, or really any of the synths that bundle with Sonar, makes me think learning something about them would be a good pre-Australia task as well.

I'm with you, +1

Thanks for all the advice. I've thought about the "see Australia" angle, and as I will be there months, I will have plenty of opportunity to do that. Never been there. I just got back from a few weeks in Saigon, no less, easily the most unlike-home place I've ever been, but working full-time there wasn't a lot of opportunity to do much except on weekends. The first few weekday evenings I explored, but once I'd "gotten it", there's not a lot to experience on a Tuesday at 8pm in Saigon on foot, so pretty quickly I was done and waited for the weekends to see more.
 
But yeah, point well taken, I'm sure I'll have less time to work on music than I think, good reason to go light. I've done a lot of business travel, but never for that long. Except for seven months in Japan, which was pre-DAW days anyway. 
 
I figure I can add Sonar & EW Play to my work laptop, which means a single machine would be going, and then buy the little Roland USB interface thing, bring my mic and desktop mic stand, and RENTING A MIDI KEYBOARD!!! What a great and in hindsight obvious idea!!! Still to be seen how much travel within Australia there will be.
 
And.... meeting up with other musicians? What a concept. I'm someone who has been writing music for 36 years, and have NEVER been in a band. Oddest thing, while I know that you can't follow an Eaug-9 chord with a plain Amin without throwing at least a 9 in there (and ooh, that C to B voice leading could be sweet...) , get me in a room with another person and I can barely plunk out Three Blind Mice. It's weird, but true.

Even with meeting folks, "band stuff" would be minor to me (no need to make stress) compared to actually meeting someone, talking, and interacting. We are a community (as dysfunctional as we get at times), but sadly one that doesn't "meet up." Simple face-to-face interaction is golden.
 
I admit I struggle and fight against "loss of community," so this is a pet peeve of mine (probably #1 on my list). We have trained ourselves that "the internet is social life" and "staring at a cell phone is better than saying hello to the stranger sitting next to you." I fight this every chance I get, and amazingly the first reaction of people is they SMILE... what a nice gift. Priceless. I may never see them again for the rest of my life, but the one time I did was meaningful.
 
We all interact here, but sort of stay in our "own little self-made world," so the opportunity to build/strengthen relationships that will last for years to come is not one I would pass up on.
 
I apologize for beating a dead horse here, but the social opportunity is huge... plus when traveling, there is no better tour guide than someone local.