What a debacle! Being Miss Anxious that I am, I decided about two weeks ago that the best way to assuage my anxiety was to just start packing and to get it all done with as quickly as possible. That way, I'd have more time to fret about... well, I'd find something else...
Anyway, thinking this was a great idea, I enthusiastically packed up my GINORMOUS green eagle creek bag stuffing it full of every article of clothing and pair of shoes I thought I might need for the next four months of my life. After years and years of flying Continental, I knew that as long as the bag was close-ish to 70lbs I'd be fine, and by the time I got finished cramming articles of clothing into the bag and forcing the zipper shut, it was pretty darn close to the limit. No big deal! I was sure I could bat my eye lashes at whomever was checking me in at the airport and get away with murder... or at least my oversized bag - as is usually the case.
Well, the night before departure date, I decided to check my travel plan emails one more time. To my horror I found a long and terrifying email from the travel agent who had booked the group flight for BU students warning us of all sorts of mishaps and disasters that could occur should we fail to follow her guidelines. In particular, this email repeatedly warned us that we must be absolutely sure to comply with Virgin Atlantic's bag requirement regulations, or we could possibly be kicked off the flight! Timidly I looked up said requirements and to my further dismay, found that there is a one bag limit per person. Plus, the weight limit is only 23 kilos. 23 kilos! What the heck is a kilo? Kilos? Pounds? Kilos? Pounds? And so begins my introduction into the foreign world of the metric system. Remember that time when the US briefly talked about switching to the metric system... like the entire rest of the world? What happened to that idea? I would have been so much better prepared for this moment if that decision had gone through!
Oh well. Not to worry. Thank goodness for google! After a little searching, I determined that 23 kilos is about 50 pounds. More importantly, 23 kilos is way less than my overstuffed monster of a bag weighed. Hurdle #264... sigh. It now being much to late at night, and my brain being much too emotionally fragile to handle this issue, I went to bed, promising myself that I would figure out how to deal with the problem in the morning.
10AM on the day of departure roles around. Big Green is still sitting in Mom's dining room stuffed with everything I own. Frantically, I search the house for a more suitable luggage choice and decide on what appear to be two lovely medium-ish sized bags. I lug them downstairs and find that my mother, who is my moral support in all things stressful, has gone out to run an errand before we go. Bravely, I decide to tackle this problem alone. Success! One bag packed and another almost finished when Mom walks in. "You're going to hate that bag at the end of this," she says. "Look. It wont stand up on its own. You've got to lean it up against things." What? Great! Oh well. Stay calm and carry on.
Finally everything is repacked, and just to make sure there will be no kicking Hannah off her flight to London, Mom and I decide that the bags must be weighed. Unfortunately, they do not fit on the scale we own. Genius that she is, Mom decides we should weigh ourselves and then hold the bags while we step back on the scale (if algebra isn't your thing... the Mom + Bag weight - the Mom only weight = the Bag weight). Mom demonstrates the technique beautifully, and we find that bag #1 is miraculously just barely under weight. My turn. I attempted to effortlessly hoist bag #2 above my head while looking at my feet to read the scale as I had seen her do. Fail. As I am slightly smaller and much wimpier than my mother the Olympian, I was completely unable to hoist said bag and look at the numbers on the scale all without being thrown precariously off balance and toppling over into Mom's beautiful display of crystal decanters. Good thing she was home to read the scale for my. Bag #2 also under weight. Success!
Now I just have to pay all these ridiculous fees for having an extra bag. Oh dear. Wallet, meet London. Prepare to lose some inches.
At least I'm packed though!
PS. Upon arriving at the airport with two large rolling bags and two stuffed carry-ons, Bag That Doesn't Stand Up on Its Own presented many problems - one of which was its uncanny ability to flip upside down twisting my arm and elbow completely the wrong direction and forcing me to trip over it and my own feet at the LGA airport. I'm sure that at least I provided some comic relief to someone's day. Always a silver lining.
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