Murphy’s Law of Travel: preparations
will expand to take up all available time
Hi there, it’s Karen.
I’m starting this post in the Amsterdam airport, waiting for our
overnight flight to Nairobi to board, but when it’s online and you’re reading
it, we’ll be in Lubumbashi already!
It was a rather traumatic final 24 hours before getting to
the airport in Seattle, but – with the help of family – we managed to get
everything done. We had a bit of magical thinking about how much stuff we had
to move from the apartment into storage and how much time and truck space it
would take to pack it up and move it to our storage unit. Our flight was
scheduled to leave around 1:30 PM Wednesday. I was methodically packing and weighing
my bags Tuesday morning, congratulating myself on how far in advance I was
getting it done. We had various errands to do, too – Eric’s final rabies shot,
picking up glasses, getting an international driver’s license (do those things
count for anything anyway?). At 6 PM, when we made our way up to Shoreline to
borrow Eric’s brother-in-law’s big
pickup truck, it was already clear that we wouldn’t make our scheduled 7:30
dinner in West Seattle.
When we loaded the first piece of furniture into the pickup
at the loading dock at the apartment, panic set in. There was no way we’d fit even
the pared-down belongings we’d had in the apartment these past couple of months
in the bed of this truck. Not to mention that the kitchen still wasn’t packed
up, and, oh, by the way, the storage unit closed at 10. In a well-timed phone
call from her home in Texas, my friend/guardian angel Christine (who has been
party to more than one of my skin-of-the-teeth international departures)
suggested we call in reinforcements, and we did – our would-be dinner hosts, my
cousin and her partner, dropped everything and came with their pickup truck,
Subaru wagon, and calm competence to help us out.
We got the two trucks and two cars loaded by 9:10 PM and
were set to go to the storage unit on the east side. Magical thinking was still
in force; Eric said, “We can do this! Half an hour to get there, half an hour
to unload, we’ll be out by 10.” It didn’t quite compute, but at that point,
what else could we do? Eric’s son Aiden, who had spent the afternoon helping
us, hopped into the big rig with me and navigated as we drove into the wilds of
the eastside. We were making pretty good time until we got to the exit and discovered
there were construction delays on the road to the storage unit. I was way past
panic, in the zone of preternatural existential calm: what would be, would be.
We got to the storage unit at 9:37 – I know because just
then, a friend texted with the name of a restaurant to try in Amsterdam,
information which at that moment it seemed only remotely possible we would use.
There was a U-Haul backed up to the door of the storage building and three
crazed-looking young guys frantically unloading it, trying to beat the 10:00
deadline. We joined them – the five of us unloaded the two cars and the little
pickup, but at 9:53 we had no hope of getting the big pickup unloaded. Eric and
I were readjusting the pile of tied-down furniture when Aiden pointed out that
we had to be out not just of the storage building, but of the parking lot, by
10. So we high-tailed it out of the gate with seconds to spare.
Eric and I had planned a relaxing goodbye to people and
places in Seattle Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. Our notions of
conversation over a dinner of tacos and a tasty breakfast Wednesday morning
before catching a taxi to the airport had evaporated; now it was a question of
if, and how, we could deal with our stuff and get to the airport at all.
Eric drove Aiden home and on the way they had a last dinner
together of cold sandwiches, dried
seaweed snacks, and potato chips from the QFC. I drove the fully loaded big
pickup to West Seattle – to top things off, it rained briefly on our uncovered
load along the way – and belatedly sat down to dinner with my cousin and her
partner around 10:30. I joked that they’d think twice before ever inviting us
to dinner again! Eric arrived there around 11:30.
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| Eric in the back seat of the taxi with the bags |
Wednesday morning, far from our vision of hash browns,
omelets, and espresso drinks, was a carefully timed and executed sequence of
events: up at 6, to the storage building by 7:30, unload the truck, get
everything into the units, then back to the apartment by 9:00. Load Goodwill
items in pickup, clean and vacuum apartment, turn in keys by 10:30. Drive
loaded pickup and Prius with our luggage back up to Shoreline, drop off keys,
paperwork, bags of things we’d saved out for Aiden and his brother Isaac,
change clothes, then into the waiting taxi by 11:00. In the end, we left for
the airport with the two of us, the driver, and our bags just fitting in the
taxi at 11:15.
It was smooth sailing from there. Each of our 4 checked bags
was exactly at or one pound under the weight limit, and all were checked
straight through to Lubumbashi. We had an uneventful, if uncomfortable, flight
to the Netherlands, where we stored our carry-ons at the airport and spent the
better part of the day in Amsterdam. At Bijenkorf we were excited to find
240-volt versions of small appliances we’d not brought from home -- a stick
blender (with a food processor attachment!) and a beard trimmer (with vacuum
action! though we passed up the one that was laser-guided). After a short nap,
a shower, and an early dinner, we caught the train back to Schiphol, and are
now on our way to Nairobi, thence to Lubumbashi, where we expect to be met and
shepherded through customs by a helper very kindly arranged by a Florida-based
Lubumbashi native, of whom I’m sure you’ll read more in later posts on this
blog.
What have we learned from all this? Well, for one thing, to
triple our estimates of the time it takes to pack or move, and to more
realistically estimate the resources we need! We also learned, however
belatedly, to recognize our limits, to ask for help, and that people responded
generously when we did. On a deeper level, as I was sorting and packing and
hauling all that stuff – the stuff we wanted to store, the stuff we were giving
to Goodwill, the stuff we were bringing to DRC – I was struck once again by the
way we’ve burdened ourselves with material goods. On the one hand, I want to
have things that are useful, well-designed and well-made, and to keep them
until they no longer serve a purpose. I want to be conscious of the resources
that go into things, and the money they cost, and avoid being wasteful. On the
other hand, because I move so much, is packing, moving, storing, and unpacking
worth the resources? It’s not a simple equation – it involves not only time and
material resources (gas, space, money), but also emotional ones. As I get
older, or perhaps just wiser, holding on to even treasured possessions feels
oppressive at times.
A book I would have packed if I’d known I had two extra
pounds of luggage allowance (but of course, even without knowing that I could
have packed it and left behind a pair of shoes or bottle of saline solution) is
Free, by Mark Scandrette. I met him when he presented at Seattle
University’s Search for Meaning book festival last February. The book and his
website describe how he and his family have gotten rid of nearly all their
possessions, and how freeing it is to live outside the consumer economy. I’m
not there yet, but it’s an appealing destination. For now, though, we’re headed
to Lubumbashi! More about that in our next post.
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| On board flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi |
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| A little worse for wear -- in Nairobi, boarding flight to Lubumbashi |
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