We're off! June 2, 2006
Day 1 of our Round the World trip. After a morning of hurry, hurry, hurry, faster, faster, aaaannnndd - WAIT. This morning was just shy of chaos. Last minute packing, putting things into the attic for storage, cleaning my sister's room, meeting with a friend of the family who will be cat sitting for a couple weeks while my parents are in Alaska. There wasn't much time to relax and spend quality time with the kitties - don't think they really noticed. Oh, and today's my birthday. Mom made a great lunch that we inhaled and we met with Mary for Mexican the night before. We officially hit the wall yesterday at about 4pm. We had spent the morning packing the bikes and had realized that four bike bags did not meet the carry-on allowance for SAS on only one bag. Dilemma. We couldn't but the bike bags within each other and still carry all of the contents of the bags. Idea, buy a couple inexpensive bags the carry our stuff. We were off to the thrift store. There are two in Port Orchard virtually next door to each other. We scored a pretty good bag at the Helpline but hit pay dirt at St. Vincent de Paul. Of course the bags had to meet certain size requirements (sheesh, all this restrictions) so I had a tape measurer and we were measuring all possible candidate for carry on luggage. At St. Vincent de Paul they had a big bin filled with bags. All good things in Thrift stores are found by digging through stuff. Sure enough I found a pretty much brand new carryon bag with the 50th anniversary of SAS airlines stitched onto the side! I measured the bag and it was a little over size but how could theyy deny the company's own bag?! With the bag and like new muffin tin for mom we were set!
This morning was all of the stress of preparation coming to a head, meaning - bickering. At one point the conversation took an ugly turn, "Ya know, I not really wanting to go on this trip with you."
"That's funny, I feel the same way." Yeah, there was a little of stress. We also had to get one last set of shots at Safeway, literally just before we had to catch our ferry to Seatac airport. The staff at the Safeway pharmacy asked when we were leaving, "Um, in about one hour." Nothing like doing things at the last minute to create a more exciting start to a trip. Sadly, the frantic pace was not intentional. We had to take my dad's truck to haul the bikes. The truck will fit three comfortabley. Mom wanted to come too. Now, four people can fit in there but I would only recommend this if you know the people really well. We planned to have Mary meet us at the ferry terminal on the other side to take mom. We called her to let her know what ferry we would be taking, "Hello, it's the sardines - we'll be on the 2:55 direct". Mary was kind enough to bring one last latte (double tall nonfat) from Café Ladro which was very much appreciated/needed. We got to the airport and I hopped out to get a cart. It was $3 which I thought was a little steep but how else were we going to haul those boxes. Well, it sure came in handy for the 25 yards we had to take them to the SAS counter. Yeah, dad did good and parked right outside the SAS doors. The cart was short so the boxes only fit on crossways which created a super wide load. I'm sure it was pretty comical - especially when everything started to slide off as we went down the small incline from the entrance.
We had said our goodbyes to my mom and dad at the entrance. Their words of advice were to take care of each other, be patient with each other and that we were all that we had out there. Mom of course had put together a little baggy of snacks (fruit and really tastey homemade turkey jerky). The check in process was pretty painless and the security went a lot faster than anticipated. Granted we arrived about 4 hours early. Once outside our gate, bikes checked, through security it was finally starting to sink in that all this planning and prep are coming to fruition. We've been grinning at each other a lot. No need to say anything.
