Well, we’ve had some bloggable occurrences even before our
first Piña Coladas were poured, so I figured I’d share.
I’ll start with the packing fiasco of Thursday night. To preface, after loading our credit cards up
in August with the cost of the trip, we decided to be frugal and cut back on
our spending until we left. The funny
thing was a week later I was in Charlotte for the weekend and what did Sydne
and I do other than look for new outfits for Mexico. The expenses were justifiable because they
were “for the trip.” Then of course we
both made $75+ Target runs last week for pointless travel-sized items and beach
novels “for the trip.” In a serious
effort to reduce spending, we decided to only check one bag. For those of you who don’t fly often, most
airlines (in our case US Airways) charge $25 each way to check a bag. So, the plan was to each bring a personal
item (large backpack), carry-on suitcase (biggest size allowable), and share an
extra-large checked bag.
Rewind to Wednesday night.
Both of us are sitting in our rooms (mine in Wilmington, Sydne’s in
Charlotte) on speakerphone, discussing how we could consolidate items for the
checked bag. Keep in mind that not only
were we trying to fit everything in one suitcase, we were trying to keep the
total weight under 50 lbs to avoid the crazy overweight fees. Since we were flying out of Raleigh at 7am
Friday morning, we decided to take care of the baggage logistics on Thursday
night. Thankfully, another one of our
friends, Judith, lives close to the airport, and offered her place to us to
crash for the night.
Thursday evening, we grabbed dinner and drinks in Raleigh and
headed to Judith’s to pack the shared checked suitcase. Both of us brought our largest suitcase to
compare. Sydne’s was a little bit
larger, so we decided on using hers, and went through our things again to
double-check that we had no repeat bug sprays, Pepto Bismol, etc. Everything fit perfectly, so all that was
left to do was weigh the suitcase to ensure it was under the weight limit.
I picked up the fully-packed suitcase and stated, “Oh, it’s definitely under 50 lbs. We’re good.”
Just to be sure, we went to Judith’s bathroom to find a scale. After a few tries, we realized that it was
near impossible to distribute the load of the awkwardly-shaped bag on the 1
foot by 1 foot scale. So, one of us had
to weigh themselves, weigh themselves lifting the suitcase, and then do some
simple subtraction to find the standalone weight of the suitcase. There was no way either of us was stepping
on the scale after the French fries and beers from dinner. Thank goodness for Tyler, who took one for
the team and weighed in at 176 lbs.
All right, 176 + 50 = 226 lbs. That
was our limit.
I must have been pumping some serious iron at the gym
recently, because even though I thought we were “good,” we ended up being 8 lbs
overweight. Back to the drawing board…
We consolidated and consolidated again.
I was faced with tough decisions, like giving up my favorite facewash to
use Sydne’s lighter bottle for the week.
And using the hotel’s lotion rather than bringing my 16 oz (that’s a 1
lb reduction!) tub. The suitcase
reweighed in at 50.2 lbs. Obviously the airline is going to round
down. We’re good to go.
Then another thought arose.
How would we bring tequila back home with us? Liquid has
to go in the checked bag. We pondered
this thought for a good 15 minutes.
Tyler made the final call when he told us we should “stop being stingy”
and just each check a bag. We did the
math and we were only actually saving $25, so we dismissed our previous
money-saving thoughts and loaded up our own extra-large bags. I endearingly glanced over at my neglected facewash,
placed the bottle in my suitcase, and thought, “Ok, now I’m ready for Mexico.”
Talk about some “First world problems”…
0 comments :
Post a Comment