From the road…
March 1, 2001 – Denver
Nellie Bly managed to travel around the world with one piece of hand luggage, 16 inches wide and seven inches high. Fogg left only with a carpetbag full of money and the plan to buy clothes on the way. Personally, I would not want to be sharing a compartment with Fogg after those first couple of days, but that is beside the point.
How did they do that?
You would think we should have an easier time of it. Everything is smaller, more compact, lightweight. This is the long way of saying that we are still trying to figure out how it will all fit. NASA called earlier today to inform us that our pile of stuff is visible from space and would we be so kind as to do something about it. Something about messing up their terrestrial mapping… I dunno.
I look and wonder about how we will find room for our clothes. Our non-clothing items alone almost take up a bag. Books, papers, tickets. And gadgets! I swear we are a roll of duct tape short of a MacGyver. We probably have enough tools to repair or improve most things we will encounter.
While I advocate that you can never have too many flashlights, I suspect we could illuminate a runway at Chicago O’Hare. We thought that photocopying pages from books instead of taking them might reduce the total volume, but that did not work as well as planned.
March 2, 2001 – Denver
Saturday we had a number of friends over for a “Bon Voyage” party. I can only hope that our guests had as much fun as we did. It was great seeing everyone – some we had not seen in years. Everyone I talked to seemed more confident in our ability to complete this trip than I think we are. It was a nice boost as the countdown clock continued to tick away the seconds.
Then the cold reality of preparation sets in. Packing. This is the part I like least. What do we really need? What will realistically fit? We have and need a lot of documents. The good thing is that there is quite a bit of paper that we will be able to get rid of along the way (photocopied sheets, reservation information). That consolation is tempered by the fact that souvenirs will probably fill the space currently taken by these papers. In the end, we will bring what we bring and we will cope.
No trip would be complete without at least one of us being sick. It is my turn. My current condition will only be enhanced by my new two-week course of antibiotics. Great way to start the trip.
Add to this mix a set of tickets that have yet to arrive. Russia, of course. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma stapled to our paperwork, it appears. Anxiety increases as each day passes and the tickets are still not in hand. We knew that these tickets would not be arriving until the week before we left. I was not too concerned about it until, of course, they did not arrive. While there is little that can be gained by worrying about it, our trip could end up a lot shorter than the one we had envisioned.
And to add insult to injury, it is Pledge Week on Public Radio.
Through all of this, Bob Marley’s refrain echoes like a mantra in the back of my mind, “Everything’s gonna be alright, everything’s gonna be alright…”
March 3, 2001 – Denver
Our Russia tickets are in the US. Not in our possession yet, but much closer. The feeling of relief from knowing our tickets are almost in hand balances the stress of packing. It is not an equal balance, but it helps some.
We are applying the Michael Palin rules and packing for six days, or at least trying to. We have managed to whittle down and separate the luxuries from the essentials; what we will use and what we will use enough. Now we just need to put it in our bags. If we are lucky, we will have extra room. If we are luckier, we will be smart enough not to put more stuff into our extra space. The hardest days of most trips are the ones just before you leave and just after you arrive. The trip to the initial destination is the calm eye of the storm, between the time when you have jammed your gear into a bag and when you realize what you have forgotten or what has been lost along the way. We will have a few days in London to sort this out before our trip begins in earnest.
March 4, 2001: BA2018: Denver to London Gatwick
We have managed to get all of our bags packed and get them and ourselves to the airport and en route to London. We will have a few days to determine if there is anything essential that we have forgotten to pack; basically a full dress rehearsal before the real trip begins.
Our Russia paperwork arrived. Not quite at the last minute but close enough to add a bit more stress. Antibiotics messing with my system. Hungry, but not eating.
[T]he secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away; knowing what to keep.
Kenny Rogers
When we left Denver, the temperature was in the 50s (F). We must have looked quite foolish with bags loaded with sweaters and winter coats. I have been checking the weather at our planned destinations fearing it would be uncomfortably warm when we arrive and that we would melt. It is with mixed emotions that I greet the news that London is having a cold snap.
In the news today, Belgium believes it has detected the first case of foot and mouth disease in pigs that were imported from the UK. Since the infected animals were in contact with other animals, this has prompted a mass slaughter of pigs, causing great concern in the rest of Europe.
Also, the French-English immigration conflict continues. A group of Romanian asylum seekers was recently found stowed away in “sealed” compartments underneath the Eurostar train cars. Once they set foot on UK soil, they are subject to the UK refugee programs. The French authorities, understandably, are are not always incented to stop them from leaving France.
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