Monday, February 27, 2006

Almost

I packed my bags last night. Underwear, toiletries, cans of soup and clam chowder and tuna, two pounds of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, several bags of Reese's peanut-butter filled chocolate Easter Eggs, and finally my clothes. Made up some new luggage tags to apply to both outside handles and the inside of each bag. Weighed them, with some difficulty. Each bag is almost exactly 40 pounds, 10 pounds under the limit.

And then I noticed that one of the bags is coming apart at a seam.

Looks like the edge of the bag frame was damaged - probably a heavy jolt somewhere - and the fabric began to tear away, leaving about a two-inch gap near the top of the bag. Maybe this is OK for a car trip to the shore, but it's bad enough that I won't trust it on the flight from BWI to Newark to Shannon and back again.

So it looks like there's one more thing I have to do before I go: buy a new piece of luggage!

2 comments:

  1. I've got a couple of decent bags you can borrow, Harry, if you like. One of which you can have. Let me know.

    Bill

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  2. Thanks, Bill, but I never would have been able to squeeze in the three-hour round-trip. I bought myself an expensive and very nearly oversized Samsonite bag. (Why do luggage companies advertise their bags by height alone, while airline restrictions dictate "total linear dimension" - length + width + height?) Because of its larger size it's also slightly heavier, so paradoxically it actually holds LESS stuff than my old bag - putting the old contents into the new bag put it over the weight limit. More stuff for the carry-on.

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