A word about luggage.

Travelling is easy. Travelling overseas is fun. Travelling around the world is one of the most amazing experiences for the human soul.

Luggage sucks.

Long ago we decided that we would travel with the world's most garish and ridiculous luggage so that it was easily identified on the baggage carousels. The suitcases that we already owned were basic black, but we had adorned them with iron on strips of brightly colored ribbon, but of course, for this trip, we needed more. Much more.

As Gayle was making the 'big' move this time, uprooting her from the last 50 years of life in North Carolina to the instability of a life in Australia with few friends and little that was familiar, she decided to bring a few precious belongings with her.

We travelled with eight suitcases.

We bought suitcases because of their size and bright colours, not because of their quality. Seven arrived, battered and re-stitched and worn, one died and was replaced at about the three-quarter mark - it would have dissolved into a million pieces if it went through another baggage handlers dispute.
(Advice to those about to travel - airlines hate luggage, and keep trying to throw it, lose it, or break off any parts that do not fit in their idea of the perfect shape for luggage - a sphere. Eventually, they win, and reduce all luggage to tagged and taped garbage.)

We didn't like the idea of leaving the vehicle fully loaded at anytime - especially overnight - as Gayle's whole life was in those suitcases, as well as camera equipment, two laptops and a proof-of-concept invention of mine that need to be trialled around the world.

Staying in little Guesthouses throughout Europe, we inevitably scored an upstairs room that gave us ample opportunity to enjoy the cardiac workout, lugging the bags upstairs at the end of a long day of wandering the hills taking photographs, or just driving in the car.

So, up the stairs we went - while our poor hosts looked on with incredulity.

Of course we decided that each case would represent a division of belongings - by type or whatever, (Perhaps Gayle sorted alphabetically again?) so that we would only have one or two that needed to be opened... but of course, the weight distribution factor was more relevant than any other, or was it the security factor - so items that were packed to gain extra protection like hard disk drives, were neatly wrapped in socks and then spread around the various cases so that if one case went missing, not all data was lost. This meant that clean socks were in each of the cases.

It gets worse, but suffice to say, all cases needed to be opened each night, so that Gayle could touch everything inside them, or find a new way of packing, or even so that I could retrieve a hard disk drive to continue with my data backups on the road.

Luggage sucks.



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