Departure Day

The days leading up to our departure were a total blur.  Last minute appointments, dinners and good-bye parties with friends, unexpected house repairs, plus frantically trying to finish packing up the house and our suitcases.  The day before we left we had a repair man at the house working on the heater, another repair man working on the septic, and friends coming and going offering their assistance in last minute packing.  Marc and I stayed up until 3 am packing until we collapsed into bed only to awake at 6 am to finish the job.  My parents arrived late morning and it was literally up until the minute we had to leave that we were stuffing the last items into the bags, cleaning the house, and touching up the paint on the walls.  It was a whirlwind of energy expenditure.

On the way to the airport we swung by Good Will to leave, literally, a car-full of donation items.  As if the universe was playing a cruel joke on us when we arrived the gate was closed.  We pulled over and I went inside to figure out if we could still drop off our items.  One of the workers simply waved a finger at me to leave.  Well that wasn’t going to do.  I found another worker and asked the same question.  They had a truck making a pick-up or delivery, I couldn’t really tell, and for safety reasons was unable to accept donations until the truck left.  We were going to have to come back.  "When", I asked?  No reply.  I’m sure I sounded like a total nut-case when I proceeded to tell the worker that we actually couldn’t come back because we were literally on our way to the airport and if we couldn’t leave the items there then we would have to throw everything away.  If that didn’t make me sound crazy my subsequent actions would have totally sealed the deal.  I assured him that I only needed 2 minutes to get everything out of the car.  Without waiting for a response I ran back out to the car and with the help of Marc and my father we proceeded to quickly empty everything out of the car.  They kept closing the gate on us and we kept opening it and running things in to the drop-off section.  By the time we were done there were 3 other workers at this point helping us just trying to get us out of there.  How ironic that in an effort to do the right thing and donate items we obnoxiously forced ourselves into their facility.  I'm sure everyone there was totally annoyed by us by the time we left.

Finally we were off to the airport.  We’re doing pretty good on time despite all the chaos of the morning and at this point only the adrenaline is keeping us awake.  As we park and unload the car I’m really starting to question the weight of our bags.  I have a sinking feeling that we’re going to be over the limit and I really didn't want to have to pay even more money for heavy bags.  Here's some pics of us at the airport with, yes that's right, 3 carts full of suitcases and carry-ons.

We check-in our bags and sure enough one is over the limit.  The gentleman explained that if we couldn't lighten the load we were going to pay an extra $150.  Ugh! We tried redistributing items to lighter bags but couldn't bring it down to the limit load.   We explained that we’re going to be gone for a year and we tried our best to keep it to the weight limits.  After getting (what I assume is) mildly annoyed waiting for us to redistribute items he finally agrees to let the bag go through without the extra fee.  Crisis barely averted.  I’m still concerned about our carry-ons.  I sneakily weighed a few while we were at the check-in counter and they were all too heavy.  I hoped that if we just carried everything like it was light enough we'd be waved onto the plane without any notice.  Thankfully that is exactly what happened.  No one even looked twice at us.  Phew!

We have just enough time to enjoy a little food with my lovely family and after saying our good-byes head off to Security and finally to our flight to France!