Presidential Traverse
It's finally time. I have all of my gear in a large pile on the floor (soon to be in a duffel bag) and a reservation for a car to haul me (and my gear) to the airport at 6am tomorrow morning. US Airways will probably take much pleasure in charging me some fee for checking a bag. And a heavy bag at that. I miss Delta. Sadly, they wouldn't fly me to Manchester, NH from New York, and the customer rep couldn't explain why Delta won't give me a single itinerary to get me to Manchester even though I could piece together multiple flights manually and achieve the same thing (at a ridiculous cost). I spent forty-five minutes listening to her say, "no flights are available" despite evidence to the contrary. Whatever.
On this trip we're going to brush up on doing crevasse rescue, get used to each other when doing roped travel, try to remember all of those knots we were taught so long ago and make sure all of our new equipment is adequately broken in (but not broken).
I'll be back Friday night. Now you know. And now you don't have to call me a dozen times, leaving frantic voice mails, musing endlessly (on voice mail) regarding my whereabouts. Please. Yes, it's good to be loved. It just needs to be tempered a bit. Okay?
Update: So, Delta is nice to me. They don't charge me for the first three checked bags each flight. US Airways couldn't care less about me (because I rarely use them), so I'm subject to some stupid baggage fees. Get this: your first checked bag costs $15 ($65 if it's over 45 pounds), and your second checked bag costs $25 ($75 if it's over 45 pounds). Now, back up several minutes - to a time when I had not yet learned this: with a great sense of accomplishment, I managed to stomp nearly all of my climbing gear (except for the snow shoes, boots and nalgene bottles) into a single duffel bag. I was pleased. Then I weighed it: 63 pounds. That's a little on the heavy side I thought. And that's when decided to brush up on US Airways' baggage fee policy. Zip ahead to the present: I re-packed everything into two duffels, which will cost me $35 (and allow me to take up to 90 pounds of stuff) instead of paying $65 for one duffel (with a weight limit of 70 pounds) and still having to carry the few items that wouldn't fit.