Sunday, November 23, 2008

Lessons Learned

We made it. On a plane to Japan and all the stress of getting ready for this trip are in the past. What a relief, phew! We have never been so happy to get on a plane.  We learned a few lessons and received a few blessings in disguise before our big adventure.

First lesson - never actually put your packing into your luggage the morning of departure. For one, you may miss your flight.  Lucky for us half-hour later we were on another flight and on our way to Phoenix.  What a blessing that was, we realized that our backpacks were way too full and had an opportunity to re-pack and leave stuff behind.  Pack your bags a few days before and walk around to see how 43 pounds really feels.

This didn't look like so much when it was laid out
Lesson two – always check the weather at your final destination.  We had the brilliant idea of wearing our winter clothes on the plane so they won’t take up any space in our packs, but we arrived in Phoenix to a balmy 86 degrees. Blessing was we got really excited about rewinding and starting summer all over again and knowing our hats, shoes, and gloves are packed away for a whole other year.
Lesson three – always have your camera ready to shoot. As we frantically made our way through airport security with less than 2 minutes to make it to our gate, I quickly fell behind Mike running through the terminal because I was laughing so hard watching him try and hold up his pants with one hand (since he had to take off his belt to go through the metal detectors) and with his other hand try to keep the aluminum Sigg bottles from clanking against each other because he had strapped them to the side of his bag. I was literally in tears and that image is forever tattooed in my mind, but I wish I had taken a picture. 
Finally and most importantly make time to see family and friends before a big trip, always a blessing.

4 comments:

Tri and Justin said...

Yay! I look forward to reading all about your trip! The travel bug must be infecting everyone - I just heard over the weekend of 2 couples also doing extensive trips. One couple will be in Europe for 4 months and another will be going throughout Asia for 8 months! I told them they had to make it to VN for Tet. :D

I miss you guys already! Glad you're learning travel lessons. I think we only packed 5 or 6 days worth of clothes and continually washed them when we did our trip, although we had the luxury of not carrying everything we owned with us. You gotta lighten that load so you can fill it back up with goodies you're gonna buy!

KeNNy said...

Hey! Glad to see you made it ok! Soo good to see you guys before you left! Have a safe trip!!

TamCJ said...

So glad you made it safely! Loved reading about your history and backgrounds. Look forward to hearing more

Loli Go said...

Wish we could hang out with you guys all over again...everyone had a great night and talked about how awesome it was to see both of you before your trip! I laughed when I visualized Mike holding up his pants (I can totally picture it)! Glad you made it safely, and can't wait to hear about more of your adventures! Ooohh, we're getting rain in phx - we're excited (even though we leave to new mexico tomorrow to see my family for thanksgiving) we will miss the phx rain). we will get some more days of it i'm sure. Ciao!