The advantages of Paddington Travel
I need to take a leaf out of P. Bear's book.
Travelling with only a hatful of marmalade sandwiches and a small attache case makes a whole lot of sense.
I, however, came to the US with 21 boxes of air freight, weighing just over 500kg. At the time, it seemed to make sense - paying for storage in London was, unbelievably, going to cost more than my sister's discounted BA cargo charge, and that's not counting all the money I would have had to spend buying new bedding and dishes etc when I got to the US.
But things are never that simple. All 21 boxes were "accidentally" put on a plane to New York, instead of Washington where they were meant to go. Then, in a brilliant flash of inspiration, BA put all 21 boxes back on a plane to London, where they were reloaded onto a flight out to Washington. Only 20 boxes, however, were released to me when I was eventually called to collect them at DC. One was missing: the one containing all my underwear...
***
It is hardly surprising that I have been resisting returning to the UK. The prospect of repeating this little adventure is not appealing. And although I've been doing my best to "bequest" or donate or plain throw away as much stuff as I can, it seems likely that I will have even more boxes to take back with me.
So for the last week, I've been in the garage, trying to sort out and repack this mass of stuff. It's an Operations problem that would tax even the mighty Ed Davis, so much so that today I seriously considered trying to write an optimization spreadsheet that would tell me how to divide up stuff between air freight and surface (a function of handling limits, $ cost, cubic feet, weight, urgency of need of the contents, the price of New York crude oil for June delivery and the number of cardboard cuts on my fingers).
Bridget Jones liked to keep track of cigarettes, calories and National Lottery scratchcards. I, contrast, will be keeping daily and cumulative total of number of boxes packed from now on on this blog.
Today's magic number: 17.
Travelling with only a hatful of marmalade sandwiches and a small attache case makes a whole lot of sense.
I, however, came to the US with 21 boxes of air freight, weighing just over 500kg. At the time, it seemed to make sense - paying for storage in London was, unbelievably, going to cost more than my sister's discounted BA cargo charge, and that's not counting all the money I would have had to spend buying new bedding and dishes etc when I got to the US.
But things are never that simple. All 21 boxes were "accidentally" put on a plane to New York, instead of Washington where they were meant to go. Then, in a brilliant flash of inspiration, BA put all 21 boxes back on a plane to London, where they were reloaded onto a flight out to Washington. Only 20 boxes, however, were released to me when I was eventually called to collect them at DC. One was missing: the one containing all my underwear...
***
It is hardly surprising that I have been resisting returning to the UK. The prospect of repeating this little adventure is not appealing. And although I've been doing my best to "bequest" or donate or plain throw away as much stuff as I can, it seems likely that I will have even more boxes to take back with me.
So for the last week, I've been in the garage, trying to sort out and repack this mass of stuff. It's an Operations problem that would tax even the mighty Ed Davis, so much so that today I seriously considered trying to write an optimization spreadsheet that would tell me how to divide up stuff between air freight and surface (a function of handling limits, $ cost, cubic feet, weight, urgency of need of the contents, the price of New York crude oil for June delivery and the number of cardboard cuts on my fingers).
Bridget Jones liked to keep track of cigarettes, calories and National Lottery scratchcards. I, contrast, will be keeping daily and cumulative total of number of boxes packed from now on on this blog.
Today's magic number: 17.
posted by alranson | 12:27 PM
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