01/09/11 - Burbank, CA
About two months ago we packed for our trip. Unpacked. Packed again. Then made a detailed list of our final chosen items.
Today that list was printed, read, marked, amended, marked again, and in the end all was shoved into its proper place with no room to spare; our bag as plump as a sausage.
It all fit! Fabulous! But wait... What were we going to do when we bought something over our nine weeks traveling around New Zealand? Such things do tend to happen.
This question had come up before, and a lightweight compressible duffel bag was our answer. The problem was that Katie and I are prone to a bit of purging every now and then, and somehow we'd purged ourselves right out of a duffel bag. Sure, those bags were stained and weathered, but did that mean we should've thrown them into a dark, dank alley of a some grimy secondhand shop? Of course not! It was clear karma was having its sweet revenge. This was further evidenced by the fact that the aforementioned secondhand shop had not a duffel bag to be found. We should know, as we checked several times, over several weeks, with only flimsy SWAG bags and cracked leather purses to show for it.
Should we buy a new one? Hogwash! We had what we needed and didn't respect that. How could we justify buying another duffel bag? At full price, no less!
Finally, in our darkest hour, Katie explored the deep recesses of our closet to find that which we'd believed to be lost. That buried treasure. That holy grail. That duffel bag.
The question was: How were we going to fit it into our other bag?
Katie worked her magic and somehow, someway, that sausage grew another inch of girth. Voila! We were absolutely, positively, finally packed for our trip...six days before departure.
That sounded about right to me. Katie was once a Girl Scout. Myself, a Campfire Girl. Lord knows preparedness is highly touted in those circles. We just hoped we didn't think of another necessity for our trip, or we may need to rip that duffel bag right out of that sausage and actually use it. Excuse me while I Google the jaws of life…