Gloves: heavy duty all leather work gloves, no need for anything crazy or super expensive (I weld for a living, plenty of hot stuff there). grill brush, plain old wire hand brush, if it's super nasty good old aluminum foil works like a charm crumpled up. Fire starters are for campers... use newspaper or your local merchandiser (it's free). The 2 meat probes i use came from walmart, they aren't blue tooth or anything, but prove accurate and were $20 each. Smoking doesn't have to be complicated, along your journey you'll come to find this to be a truism. Spend money on quality meat, it doesn't have to be wagu or anything, just not bottom of the line. Keep it simple, profect your cooking, enjoy it and have cookouts and maybe a back up in-case while on the journey things don't go as planned. Keep a log, meat made, temp cooking at weather conditions, these will help you figure things out along the way. Like it was cold and rainy and was hard to keep a decent temp.