And So The Adventure Continues

I am sitting in my hotel room in Paris, at 3 in the morning staring at the ceiling just a little too long. I have tossed and turned enough to pull all the blankets loose from the bed, read Time magazine from cover to cover and looked out my window for hints of daylight Ah jet lag, you gotta love it. So I decided to put in my first entry into the sequel of “Where in the world is Alan”. I still have the kidney stone with me, but the stint was taken out and the doctor gave me a hesitant pass on leaving the country. With a medicine cabinet full of Vicadin and antibiotics, I look forward to joining my kids that have been marooned on my boat waiting for me to catch up with them.

Getting ready to spend the next year abroad is a formable task. What to bring and what to leave behind becomes a sort your life into a 4-bin proposition. I am allowed to check two bags on British Airways that cannot weigh more than 32 kilos each. Since I can’t find my kilo scale at home, I am forced to guess about how much to put into the bags. I can also bring one carry on and my laptop. So I pack my life up into 3 neatly packaged suitcases, putting the heaviest things in the carryon, (fortunately they don’t weigh that) and hope for the best. The rest of my life is stowed away in storage, waiting for a return trip. At the ticket counter, with fingers crossed, I place the two big suitcases on the scale. Amazingly one of them weighs EXACTLY 32 kilos. And the other one weighs 32.7 kilos. The agent squints his eyes and tells me to toss the last .7 kilos. My plea for .7-kilo leniency falls on deaf ears. Even offering to pay a little extra doesn’t work. It is about the health of the workers. They can’t lift more than 32 kilos without straining something. So I pull out my empty gym bag and everyone seems to be happy. I am just grateful they did not weigh my carryon, which is close to the same weight.

I flew into London’s Heathrow airport and head for the baggage claim. As I am pulling my carryon off the plane, the extended handle tubes bend into submission from all the extra weight. I am sure no one has ever tried to get so much into such a little bag. Waiting at the luggage carousel I have those fleeting thought of “what if they are lost, where will I ever catch up with them, how am I going to deal with missing luggage syndrome”. But out of the jaws of baggage hell, they appear on the carrousel. Man they are heavy. As I lift the second suitcase, the handle comes off in my hand. I forgot about my health. Three bags weighing a total of about 216 lbs of luggage is a lot of weight to be lugging around all by myself. I talk to the ticket agent and am told to get to Toulon by train, I have to take the Paddington express to Waterloo station, and then transfer to the chunnel. When I reach Paris, take the underground to Guar Lyon, and transfer to the Toulon train. The tricky part is I only have 25 minutes to get from the Paris station to Guar Lyon. He doubts I will make it. So do I. But if I miss that train, I have to wait until 11 am the next day to catch the Toulon train. It is worth the try. But gathering all 3 suitcases and my laptop, going down 3 flights of stairs, wandering around a huge train terminal with no real idea where I am going, asking for directions, and getting on the wrong train, jumping off running across the platform to the just departing train, traveling across town and lugging my gaggle of luggage back up 2 flights of stairs, getting through the turn styles all proves too much. I wasn’t even close to catching the train. So I find myself staying in Paris for the night.