Time has ran out!

May 28, 2014

Oh my goodness. What can, will go wrong.

The debit/ credit card that was supposed to have come yesterday, showed up at 10:30 am today
I am a failure with keeping my pack light. Hindsight is 20/20.
We packed what we thought we needed. We weighed the packs and went crazy.
Time was running out. How do we ditch the weight?
We halved things. We are sharing soap, the hair stuff. We condensed and took out items from their containers and re packed them into lighter weight ones.
We did this and we did that and I was getting upset. So frustrating trying to pack it all and make the weight we wanted.

I am off by 8 lbs. I don’t care. But I do, because I have failed to meet the mark. My bag weighs 22 lbs and Abby’s is at 14lbs. We will just equalize the contents when we make it to the airport or wherever we can in order to redistribute the 36 lbs of weight so we both will carry 18lbs. BUT…this doesn’t include water nor the ponchos. But, to assure everyone, 4lbs and 3 lbs are our packs weight empty. However, that is STILL weight!
Next year, I will do better. I will be smarter. In the meantime, I’m resigned to hire the guy to carry my pack over the mountain…I will spend money doing that instead of breaking myself early on.

There was no time to reconfigure anymore. The plane was leaving at 6:pm it is 2:pm and it takes an hour to drive from our home to LAX if traffic is good.
I dump the organized packets of stuff into our bags. I dump the compressed sacks of clothes into the bags. I’m sweating like a horse in the Kentucky Derby. I have to take a shower and change into the Camino clothes. I have to write down info for my husband. The time has ran out. I am now freaking out! I have lost it.

We get to LAX only to find out that our plane has been delayed for 3 1/2 hrs. It will leave at 9:45 tonight. We won’t get to Bilbao until 11 pm Thursday night. We have made arrangements through Couchsurfer to have a couple host us and instead of showing up on their doorstep at 6 pm we don’t even know if we can catch the public bus into the city and find our way to their place let alone if they want us at 12 am!
We just might sleep in the airport.

They won’t let us carry on our bags…even though this other woman with a 70L and a 30L backpack is allowed to carry her bags on! But we didn’t see her until we were through security check and saw her with her backpacks. She is flying Quntas.

So we reconfigure on the floor of the airport. Take out the important stuff to pack in my spare lightweight pack ( bought it along for “just in case”) in case the checked in items get lost all of our main important equipment won’t be gone.

And now we sit and wait and watch others with much more carry on items than what we had, walk around.

And so begins the Camino. Let things go and just go with it.