Skip to main content

Today’s the Day!

We are off for a month (a month!) in the UK! Most of you know this Koog needs heavy sedation to fly. For some reason, I'm calm about this flight. The calmness is creating anxiety because I am not used to being this zen when facing an airport. Anyway, I've held off "Benzo-loading" and I'm stone cold sober as we wait for our ride to the airport.

Now, Mrs. Koog has gently and not so gently reminded me to pack light as we have laundry facilities in each house we are renting. She even went so far as to find Rick Steves packing shows on YouTube. Rick and I have very different points of view about many things like fashion, hair cuts and of course, packing. He believes packing the absolute minimum (and the ugliest possible) clothes and shoes.

This is not the mindset of Koog. My default is prepare and pack for every contingency and every contingency of those contingencies. Alas, the airlines dictate one can only be prepared 2 checked bags worth of contingency supplies! Mrs. Koog, the ever patient/ever sufferring saint that she is, helped me scale down the duffel-sized first aid kit I normally travel with 5 band-aids and sunscreen. I am down to 1 pair of dressy-ish shoes and 1 pair of hiking boots. Of course, I am wearing my waterproof (but super cool) On Cloudflyer waterproof shoes.

After weighing my bag (80 lbs) I downsized. I got a small carry-on sized bag for the camera equipment (more on this later) and took out my 2 suits, 4 pairs of shoes (all variations of the wing-tip), 3 pull-over fleeces, 5 soccer jerseys and 5 shorts to leave at home.


So, right now my big bag is 38 lbs and smaller suitcase is 12 lbs.

Mrs. Koog said whatever I think I need I can buy when we get there... (will be using the 7 hr flight to think of my needs)

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How not to drive in the UK. A cautionary tale…

When we were in the UK for a month in 2023, Mrs. Koog did all the driving. I will admit, she hit nothing and no one. She got us safely from London to Bath to North Wales to Liverpool and all over Scotland until we turned in our car in Edinburgh. And when we turned in that car, it was pristine. No dings, dents, scratches or bumps. As I have written in the past few entries my trip was magical and healing and all those things trips should be. With one exception, driving. I was nervous when I booked the trip that I would forget to stay to the left and cause an international incident on the M4. Apparently, staying to the left would not be the problem. No, my problem was staying too far to the left. For some reason, I completely lost my depth perception on the left (passenger side). This issue wasn’t a real problem on the motorway as there was a shoulder and every time I’d cross the line I was able to correct immediately. The drive from Heathrow to Conwy, Wales was uneventful until I go...
3 comments
Read more

Paradise Crushed

Entering Heathrow on our way back to the US from the UK, I’ve started scheming and plotting to get back as soon as possible. Mrs. Koog firmly told me as we boarded our flight home we should pay for the trip we were still ON before buying tickets to return. Her thriftiness is endearing...sometimes. Anyway, fast forward 3 1/2 weeks…Thursday, Sept 14, 2023 to be exact. I had been pleading our return to the UK case since before we were wheels-up at LHR, and I felt like we had moved her toward a "yes." The little Koogs had just left for school and we were watching the Today Show as I checked my work email and sipped my tea. The return itinerary was limited to 3 weeks and was only Ireland (Northern and Republic of) and, of course, my beloved Wales. I was giddy as Mrs. Koog was joining me in finding places to stay around the Emerald Isle, even sending me the VRBO link to a lighthouse for rent on Arranmore Island, where her people are from in County Donegal. Our exchange ...
14 comments
Read more

Sea Sick

I’m sitting here in the surgical waiting room at Medstar Georgetown University (MGUH). So many of our friends and family offered to accompany me during this vigil. I couldn’t articulate why I needed to be alone, but I just felt like I needed to silently grieve what my wife was losing and I didn’t want to burden anyone with that heavy silence. When I am stressed, I write. Ever since I was a kid, words were always my source of comfort in times of crisis and they were my source of memory in times of fun and excitement. But today, a day when I have such acute feelings of sadness, grief and gratitude, I find I’ve lost my words. I thought about why this was as I wandered (read: got lost) the MGUH labyrinth of buildings in search of food. Finally finding the Chick-Fil-A, grabbing my food and swallowing my tears it hit me. I didn’t lose my vocabulary, there’s just so many layers to the sadness, fear and gratitude it's overwhelming and it's very close to the surface. Arriving at the...
6 comments
Read more