We're off in the morning, so there's one more sleep to go! The taxi is booked to pick us up at 8am, and the first flight of the trip departs for Melbourne around 10am. After some frantic arranging and rearranging (by me… my LP always has far less to pack or think about for these trips than me!), checking of lists, making sure all the conference presentation information I need is stored on various media (CD, thumb drive, laptop, plus printed copies) and that those media are scattered across the checked luggage and the carry-ons, making sure I have all the documents we'll need – hotel and rental car reservations, maps to the various destinations, as well as the obvious passports, insurance docs, and itinerary, we're ready!
Suitcases are by the door, reading matter and Sudokus for the flights are all printed out and in the carry-on, and the laptop and peripherals are neatly stowed in their little compartments.
Of course, we'll get to the airport in the morning and the officious people who check the hand luggage will insist that I take the laptop out of its padded sleeve inside the laptop bag (at least they don't want us to remove the batteries these days – I never did get that one). And they have a small 'repacking' table that isn't big enough for two people, and there'll be about five people all struggling with their laptops and bags and trying to get them back in and up the stairs/escalator to the departure lounge, all the while trying to juggle their coats/jackets/handbags/day packs as well. Oh, and if you get lucky you get to take you shoes off too! Which means you have to put them back on again all the while feeling as though you're some sort of pack horse whose load has loosened… Ah, the joys of airports…
And we've only got to do this nine times this trip (Perth, Melbourne, Launceston [in and out], Melbourne again, Los Angeles [in and out], Chicago, LA again, Sydney, Cairns [in and out] and then Perth). Sort of takes the shine off. Maybe one day they'll invent one of those teleporters the Star Trek people used to use.
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 