Houston, We Have a Problem.

I hope you’ve seen the movie Apollo 13.  It’s a good one, and part of it applies to my packing ordeal as if it were written for it.  

But, here’s the context for the situation:  You have three astronauts whose initial mission is to land on the moon.  However, on the way they have a freak accident that damages the craft and causing, among other things, a fuel leak and damage to a battery or something.  Moon trip is cancelled, of course, and NASA scrambles to get them home.  But, with the damaged battery, they only have 12 amps with which to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere, and a typical repowering of the module required more than that.  (In fact, I think they even mention that 12 amps is hardly enough on which to run a vacuum cleaner.  Not good news.)  NASA had to figure out a new way to repower the spacecraft that minimized the drain on power.  So, they brought in another astronaut and an exact mock-up of the module so that he could toy around with the power-up routine and make it work.  12 amps.  Any more than that, and the astronauts would be lost.

Now, are you ready for my version of the story?  All right, here goes:

According to US Airways, I am allowed two pieces of checked luggage, one carry-on, and one “personal bag” in addition to my carry-on (like a purse, you know).  The carry-on and the ”personal bag” presented no problem whatsoever, and both are neatly squared away.  However, the checked luggage gave me issues.  Each of the two bags allowed to me must weigh no more than 50 pounds; anything over 50 pounds will cost extra money, money that could be much better spent overseas than on luggage.  In essence, I have 100 pounds (and a carry-on bag) in which to carry an entire semester’s worth of essentials to Europe.  

Please don’t get the wrong idea; I’m not complaining about this restriction.  Not anymore, at least.  I mean, I was a few hours ago, but I’m over that stage.  Others have done this before; it’s obviously not impossible. 

But, you see, a few hours ago, I had one 46-pound piece of luggage and another 60-pound piece of luggage.  I was quite all right with 46 pounds; that even gives me a little lee-way in case our home scales are slightly inaccurate, which could very well be the case.  But 60 pounds is absolutely unacceptable.  So, like the guy in Apollo 13, I had to go through all my stuff again and separate the frivolities from the bare necessities.  He had to get the amperage down to 12; I had to get my poundage down to 50.  And, you know, when I thought about it that way, it was a lot more fun than thinking, “I can’t believe the airline has made such a silly restriction.  How on earth can they expect people to limit themselves to 50 pounds?  Ridiculous.  I can’t believe I have to leave all this stuff behind.” 

I guess it’s just all in how you think about it. 

The good news is, [spoiler alert!] NASA was able to bring their astronauts home safely because Freddo figured out how to maximize the amperage.  And I was finally able to get my suitcase down to 46 pounds.  Mission accomplished.