Tag Archives: luggage

47: Pared Packing or The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown

Why I carry a lime-green suitcase - here is the last place we saw it at Victoria Airport. Poor little suitcase. Will we ever see it again?

Our lime-green suitcase before it got lost, then beaten badly, en route from Canada to Switzerland. Traumatized, it refused to return to Europe and is hiding under the bed at our cabin in Ontario.

The house slippers went out yesterday: Rubbery black crocs with crushed faux-lamb lining discarded in my campaign to lighten my luggage. I almost felt sorry for them, little Euro-crocs whose hopes for a better life in America were dashed on the empty egg cartons in our kitchen trash.

Skinnying down my suitcase is not in my nature, however, it is a happier prospect than wrenching a shoulder dragging luggage from the hotel to the train station, up the train steps, off again through another station, into the yaw of Zürich’s Airport where I will be pressed upon to walk for 85 minutes with the thing. This is Switzerland’s mandatory travellers’ fitness test. If you can do the forced march through their airport security maze, they will let you in the country, and later they may even let you out.

And so everyday I stare at my dwindling possessions to figure out what else I can live without. Considering that I travelled with four full hockey bags, two large suitcases plus carry-on luggage on a round-the-world ticket over a 5 month period, what is happening now is on par with the miraculous. I expect a letter from Vatican  investigators to arrive any day.

This is the grandiose manner in which I look at this project, but on hearing of the ughy-crocs’ demise, Dave asserted he could get all of his goods in one carry-on suitcase. In a recent practice pack, his goods took up a full suitcase and a carry-on. He’d have to shave off two-thirds of his possessions to make good on his boast.

Conveniently, this Thursday is a holiday, so instead of visiting Lucerne, Bern or some other delightful Swiss city, we are going to be holed up in our hotel room, trying to best one another at lightening our luggage.

73: Pack-Attack plus Can Luggage Get You Arrested?

Pack-attack: A subset of a traveller’s obsessive-compulsive disorder that leads to repetitive packing-planning sessions.

The second pack-attack of the season struck this week, 73 days out from our trip, which means I got to this task just in the nick of time.

I don’t want to say that I am a packing expert, although I  moved through two hemispheres, five countries, three continents and three provinces. I lose count after that. I’ve packed with an 80-lb. dog in tow, assorted numbers of offspring, and in the range from transporting full households including the kitchen garbage (packed by the moving company without my noticing – they were paid by the pound), to all the way down to what Dave and I could drag while running to catch a train (two suitcases and two carry-ons).

A fraction of our collected goods.

After excavating all our Swiss-worldly goods from our closet, I discovered our possessions have multiplied, possibly while we slept, more likely while I shopped.  I have also made the miserable discovery that our 33 books weighing 15.2 pounds will cost $500 to ship back to Canada, so there will be some serious editing going on over the coming weeks that will enrich our hotel’s library, but cause us some mourning. We love our books, but when it is cheaper to replace them than to post them, well, the typeset is on the wall.

When all was accounted for, it was decided that we need to purchase another suitcase. As if on cue, during Dave’s daily lunch walk, he happened upon a posh black suitcase among a pile of items left at the curb for pick-up. He assures me he did not dumpster-dive. And so he picked it up. It was in fairly good condition and would definitely have weathered one more oceanic crossing, however, this morning it is back at the curb.

Luggage of undetermined origins carries unlimited hazards. My first fear was lice, fleas or other minor lifeforms, but then the larger problem presented itself: What if the thing had ever been used to transport any type of narcotic? A drug dog could easily pick up trace amounts and then where would we be, but in some jail, paying a German-speaking lawyer a huge bulk of money, and all of this through the summer, which, frankly, is the worst time to be incarcerated. Not that I know anything personally about this, but why take the chance?

Leg One Okay, Leg Two, not so good

Leg One: Neighbour Dan arrives in his posh Ford Flex hybrid to drive us to airport.  Traffic congestion – moderate. Arrival at airport – on time.  On-ride conversation: Politics and general grousing about stupid decision to put McKenzie overpass at McTavish (yes, that is the McKenzie overpass, just put in the wrong place – sorry only Victorians will know what I’m talking about here).

Why I carry a lime-green suitcase - here is the last place we saw it at Victoria Airport. Poor little suitcase. Will we ever see it again?

Leg Two: First flight to Vancouver delayed; we may not make our connection to Toronto.

Leg Two the second: One flight from Victoria to Vancouver cancelled to mechanical issues. Crowd at Gate 6 searches under seats for pitchforks, farming implements. Finding none, they shrug and line up like Canadians, wearing their sternest frowns of disapproval.

Leg Two the third: Arrive in Vancouver and as per instruction, race to Air Canada service desk to join fray of angry/annoyed/resigned passengers whose trips have taken unexpected turns/delays. Not us. We’re happy that a. no planes have crashed (so far) and that b. I decided to wear athletic gear instead of 3″ heels and dress clothes.  Feeling exhilarated from sprinting up staircase.

Leg Two the fourth: Rerouted to Heathrow. Stuck in Vancouver Airport for six hours. Not so bad. Air Canada is buying us lunch and we’re sitting at Monk’s restaurant where a greasy guy with too many beer bottles at his table is staring at me.  Has he mistaken me for 24-year-old blond.  Not likely. Creepy.

On the plus side: Air Canada staff were delighted to hear my suitcase is lime green – making it much easier for them to find and redirect.

Latest development: We had to switch tables so Dave could plug in his laptop. Am now seated next to creepy staring guy.  Stay tuned.

Check out our restaurant review on Monks Grill @ YVR at https://hobonotes.com/dining-recipes/

Suitcase Security

In my previous life as a staff reporter at a serious daily newspaper,  my editors would sometimes obliquely mock our readers by forcing reporters, myself included, to write stories that revealed the editorial staff’s estimation of the readers’ intelligence.

The story would expound the gritty minutae of a task so universally understood that the reporter would know instantly that its publication would tar him/her forever as the designated village-idiot. There is nothing the reporter could do about this.

What follows is what one such story might look like, a story about how to fit a strap around your suitcase.

You may have seen similar stories in fine publications like The Globe and Mail and The National Post, one of which actually published a Page A3 story on how to hold a kitchen knife. Page A3 is usually reserved for top local news, crime, politics or events/people of note.

No doubt, the reporter had her own unwritten thoughts on uses for knives.

Packing day

It takes me two hours to  leave the house, ergo with a little application of mathematical principles (multiplication, the most complex math I know), it would appear it will take me three weeks to leave the country. We fly on Tuesday, so I’m already behind schedule.

Quasi-moving packing is not the same as three-week excursion packing, but with nowhere else to go, I turned to Rick Steves, American travel guru to Europe http://www.ricksteves.com/plan/tips/packlight.htm. Steves recommends packing no more than 20 lbs. in a carry-on bag and to prove it can be done, his website has a video tape of him unpacking his stuff.

It looks like a bit of a magic trick – he puts the suitcase on the bed, opens up the top and like a magician pulling rabbits out of hats, pulls out a stream of clothes and travel gear. I suspect there was a hole in the bottom of the suitcase  and all that stuff really had been hidden in the mattress below.

When we moved to Spain in 1999, we were each allowed two pieces of luggage weighing in at 75 lbs. each, if my memory is correct. We packed to maximum capacity, dragging our aggregate body weight overseas. Occasionally, we were upgraded to executive class, allowing us to pack three bags – or was it four?

Our luggage-weight ballooned to the point that when our younger son and I landed in Chicago we had to hire a porter. I felt like Elizabeth Taylor, minus the striking beauty and wealth.  Nevertheless, the porters’ expressions when they saw us coming down the ramp at O’Hare was a sight to behold. We may have had to hire two, but I can’t remember for sure, mostly because I couldn’t see above the luggage, which included a large crate with an 80 lb. dog.

On that round-the-world excursion, we landed in Australia with a baggage-load  so extreme, we had to mail several hockey-bags worth of stuff back to Canada at a cost exceeding $400 (in 2000 dollars – which would probably be about $408 now). That’s a lot of postage stamps.

I’m trying to avoid all that by sticking to the strict dietary-packing guidelines Air Canada is forcing on me now, but packing for four seasons and more than a year overseas is tricky business. I managed to get everything into one suitcase, except for my winter gear. I’ll still be able to do it, but it will take two trips (one suitcase apiece) instead of one.

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And now for the serious middle-age traveler who is mildly curious about real luggage advice:

  1. Expensive versus cheap luggage: Go with cheap. We’ve hauled Wal-Mart-issue suitcases around the globe without any seam-ripping, zipper-splitting, contents-bursting effects.
  2. But what if the cheap stuff breaks anyway: It is more fun replacing a $40 suitcase than a $697 suitcase.
  3. What if I’m still nervous about my luggage’s durability? Luggage shops sell luggage straps for about $4 that you can secure around your bag just in case the zipper does give way. Airlines usually provide giant heavy-duty plastic bags with postage-standard tape at no cost so at check-in you can bag and seal your goods.
  4. Hard-case or softshell luggage: Go with soft-shell. In a non-scientific survey of two (my cheap luggage versus my friends’ high-end/status luggage, my soft (hockey bag or fabric suitcase with frame) luggage was able to take the squeeze of the luggage compartment.  Hers cracked, spraying blueberry jam over all their clothes.
  5. Who carries blueberry jam on a trip to the tropics? Despite what North America’s eastern Maple Syrup lobby tells you, it is blueberry jam, not maple syrup, that sets us apart from other countries, therefore, all North American cottagers carry wild blueberry jam on out-of-country trips. It is currency in foreign lands.
  6. Carry-on luggage: Wheeled suitcase or backpack: If possible, take a hybrid that does both. Touring calls for stair-climbing (think of all those beautiful hilltop villages in Spain) and pulling a wheeled case is like sightseeing with a stroller, ie. it’s work.
  7. What to pack: As little as possible. It’s better to pack light and buy whatever else you need at your destination, even if you have to discard it or give it away to strangers before boarding the flight home, or do what I do, which is
  8. Pack heavy: But engage in a year-long weight-training program to bulk up so you can sling 50 lb. suitcases with ease.