TO THE AIRPORT AND CHECKING HOW MUCH??? HEAVY LUGGAGE 

So you are going on vacation. Basically if you are going one or two weeks you pack the same stuff.  But what if you are going for a year?  And you are trying to limit yourself to your suitcases, not shipping anything? And you are a woman of substance, like me so can I buy clothes and shoes here that will fit?  And you are trying to avoid paying the price of an extra passenger like we did?  That is a very tall order. 

Mon. morning a dear friend kindly picked us up at 3:45am to take us to the airport.  We did a practice run the night before to make sure it would all fit.  Once we arrived in Mexico we were astounded as to how much luggage can really fit into a small car.

So we had 4 carry ons (Two vultures get on a plane each carrying a 3 dead raccoons.  The stewardess, opps, flight attendant says “Don’t you know its limited to 2 carrions each”.) and 5 checked pieces.  Bruce had carefully stepped on and off the bathroom scales a million times with the various pieces at different times.  The four were under 50 lbs each and the large one 60 lbs, or so we thought. 

So at the air port Mr. Baggage check in man, with many swings of his head, pointed out they were all over and we couldn’t take the big one.  PANIC!!!  He says if we take out 5 lbs from the 65lber he’ll let us take it.  SCRAMBLE!!!  We take some stuff and quickly cram it into our carry on.  “Ok you can take them but this is gonna cost you”.  What can we do?  As Bruce says, “Pay the man and say,” Thank you very much””.  So we kept calm and kept smiling and did just so.  Now we go to the gal we have to pay.  She is horrified and so apologetic that he would charge us so much and be so inflexible.  She asks if we want her to get our luggage so we can repack it.  Well it took us days to pack it and the stress-o-meter would be going off the chart if we had to whip them open then and redistribute.  There would have been a big storm of unmentionables and what not that day.  So “Just pay the woman and say…”  What a lovely gal she was!  We told her what we were doing and she was very jealous (she said so) and commending about our endeavours.       

Now as we are walking towards security Bruce remembers his knife is in his pocket, as he always has it there.  “Good bye our little friend the knife” and Ker plunk into Mr. garbage can.  Then I remember that some of the stuff I had grabbed and crammed into my carry on, so that our other luggage could go through, has all our toiletries in it.  Well what can you do, just smile and carry on.  They stop me and I have to go back through security.  No not because of any hazardous hair spray, it’s my six year old comfy Neutralizers’ sole that are a threat to national security.  Emergency averted and off we go. 

 

A few valuable lessons can be learned here:

- do your best to try and understand your airlines baggage policy, and pack less.

- buy quality and buy less.  If you are in any major center there are lots of name brand stores and lovely seamstresses.  We could have bought a fair bit of clothing for the extra we had to pay due to our luggage being over.

- make sure, if need be, that only one bag is over and the rest a bit under.

- it might be good to invest in a little luggage scale.  Having your dear husband balancing 50 or so lbs of luggage while you are craning your neck under the luggage and around his legs might not be really conducive to accurate measurement.

- sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things may not go smoothly but maintaining your calm will help your head stay clear.  And not make the folks on the check in desk not hate their job.

So what did he say  http://thesunnysideofmexicohesaid.blogspot.mx/