Monday, 4/27

The suitcases are out & ready to go.

I had a busy weekend trying, of course, to work ahead on a whole bunch of stuff. I succeeded in most of it, and had an added bonus--the annual voyage of our trip suitcases from the recesses of our basement to the welcoming light of our living room.

It was glorious.

We leave a week from Wednesday, and the suitcases will soon be packed with all kinds of stuff. Although, if you want to be technical, the suitcases are already kind of filled with many things needed for over a week in Germany. Mine, for instance, has several plastic containers (used to safely transport chocolate and cereal), half a roll of bubble wrap (to safely wrap the chocolate before it gets put into the aforementioned plastic containers), various other non-plastic containers, a roll of duct tape, two unused washcloths, and an unopened package of socks.

Throw in a few shirts, some shorts, and a toothbrush, and I’m already packed!

Well, okay, maybe not TOTALLY packed, but with the stuff we picked up at Target a few weekends ago I think we're way ahead of schedule. We usually go to Target a few weeks before we bring the suitcases up and raid their section of travel-sized items. We pick up whatever toiletries, medicines, and personal care items we need and pack them in the plastic containers. Then the last night of the trip we toss whatever we haven’t used and/or won’t need, clean out the containers, and repack them with chocolate and other goodies. That way, we don’t go over our suitcase weight limit and have to pay a zillion dollars, and we get all of our stuff safely home.

Of course, that’s actually worked too well on several occasions. More than once I’ve had to buy several rolls of paper towels to fill out my suitcase. It serves a couple of purposes, though--the paper towels act as a great, lightweight filler, and once we get home, we have the joy of being perhaps the only people in the U.S. who are using strangely sized rolls of French or German paper towels.

Over the next few days we’ll be tossing pieces of clothing and other items we’ll be needing into the suitcases in our living room. Then a day or two before the trip, we’ll rearrange everything, pack it all neatly, and then put our TSA approved locks on them, where the suitcases then won’t be opened until we get to Kaiserslauten the day we get there (unless, of course, US or EU security gets bored and feels the need to go through them). And that, of course, is optimistically believing our luggage gets to Europe the same time we do. Unlike, say, several of our past trips.

So now when we look at our checklist of things to do, “bring suitcases up from the basement” can now be checked off. That only leaves, what...28 or 29 things left to go.

(jim@wmqt.com)