Packing for a trip is always like this: no matter how carefully I plan, draw up detailed lists with illustrations and carefully numbered steps, and get an early start packing, it always seems to disintegrate into something a step away from pandemonium. Well, it’s a modest pandemonium, reasonably quiet except for the muttering and occasional swearing, but the point is that it never goes as smoothly or as quickly as I think it should.
Case in point is, obviously, the trip to Vancouver for the meeting. I’ve actually planned ahead and checked Google’s weather for Vancouver all week, and found that the temperatures have actually been a fair bit warmer than those in Atlanta (though we’ve had an abnormally cool week): today, for instance, Atlanta’s high was 22 degC (about 72 degF), whereas Vancouver’s was apparently a shocking 33 degC (just over 91 degF). Consequently, I packed extremely lightweight clothing, and felt rather smug about my preparedness.
Of course, now I learn that the temperatures are supposed to drop pretty much as soon as my plane touches down, and the expected high temperatures for my stay are in the mid-teens on the Celcius scale (low end of the 60s Fahrenheit). This I learn, of course, after I’ve already packed my carefully selected outfits for each day, plus a couple of more casual things for the evening.
Screw it. I’m not repacking everything. I’ll just throw in a turtleneck.
I think I’m on better footing food-wise. I stopped off as Cosmo’s today and bought enough food that I may risk making customs officers think I’m part of some wacky underground movement smuggling vegan food bars and jerky across the border. (Yes, Vancouver seems to be pretty darned vegan-friendly, but it never hurts to prepare for the worst. Plus, I’ve got essentially two full days on airplanes and in airports to deal with, and I’m not sure how tired I’ll be or how inclined to gad about, particularly at first. I’d far rather overpack food and wind up with leftovers than bring only a couple of things and be ready to gnaw my own arm off by the second evening.) I think I wound up getting one of every flavor of the new Pro Bar Food Meal Replacement bars (can’t wait to try them! such cool flavors), plus some extra Vega bars, some drink mixes, chocolate, rice crisp bars, and an embarrassment of various jerky items. (I have learned that a little variety in one’s emergency food is important. It is dismal to sit in one’s hotel room in a strange city, exhausted and cranky and ravenously hungry, while being simultaneously sick to freakin’ death of the one brand of food bar you’ve brought with you.) If I’d really had my act together, I would’ve made some tofu jerky from How It All Vegan, but that would’ve required actual action on my part to marinate the tofu last night. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen.
I also got a couple of things for when I return, probably tired and cranky and in need of treats. Most exciting among the rewards for coming back home is a great big log o’ Teese. I’ve heard super things about this product, and the Chicago Soy Dairy certainly has a phenomenal track record (Temptations frozen dessert, anyone?), so I’m pretty excited. It’s supposed to be rather akin to a dairy fresh mozzarella, which would potentially mean that, if it tastes good unmelty, I can recreate the ungodly-good salads I used to make with really proper heirloom tomatoes that actually smelled like tomatoes (no refrigeration, ever! genuinely vine-ripened!), avocado, buffalo mozzarella, olive oil, and about a bucket of supermarket balsamic vinegar. (It works okay with tofu, but you really should marinate the tofu in the vinegar for at least half an hour. Well, that’s assuming you like vinegar as much as I do, and I really like vinegar.*)
I do wish I could bring some oranges or bananas with me, but I seem to recall that customs people frown on that sort of thing when traveling internationally. Surely I can find some little shop near-ish the hotel that sells fruit, or find the bus that goes to one of the natural foods stores on my HappyCow printout, so I don’t come down with scurvy while I’m away.
The primary hitch I’ve run into while packing, though, is deciding what knitting to take with me. I’m a little worried that my sweater might cause a little alarm among the various airport security staff, given that it is being knit not only on metal needles, but on circulars (i.e., metal needles that are linked by a flexible yet sturdy cord, which the imaginative yet malignant might see as a possible substitute for piano wire in the weapons arena). My plan to buy substitute bamboo or plastic needles, which might seem wimpier and thus less threatening to non-knitters, didn’t really come about (i.e., I took a nap instead of going shopping), so I’ve decided to avoid possible problems and just pack my sweater-in-progress in my checked luggage. My other WIPs include a cupcake hat for Christi’s upcoming daughter (whom I have temporarily and in a thoroughly unofficial way named Elmindreda, simply because it amuses me), but unfortunately I’ve left that at the office (lunchtime knitting project); a cabled scarf, which would be ideal but for the fact that I can just see myself dropping the cable needle and crawling around the entire airplane looking for it, asking people to move their feet and getting hysterical because it’s the second cable needle I’ve lost; and a checkerboard afghan with a pattern of ankhs, which is cool but (a) hibernating and (b) also worked on metal needles, and I don’t have non-metal needles of that size. (Plus, I don’t fancy trying colorwork in airports or on a plane.)
I’m kind of inclined to do socks, which are compact and use dinky little needles that are bordering on toothpicks. True, some people get freaked out by the sheer number of dinky little needles involved (usually four or five), and each needle has not one but two points, thus doubling the scary pointiness, but . . . they really are practically toothpicks. The pattern I’m considering (mainly because it’s pretty, and I’ve already bought it and printed it out, so it’s convenient) calls for size 2 needles, which are 2.75 mm wide. For the non-SI-friendly, that’s 0.108 inch. They’re hardly threatening. You’d be hard-pressed to stab a block of tofu with it, let alone an actual person.
So, barring the last-minute things I still need to pack, such as my toothbrush, and getting dressed in the morning — and actually getting up in time to catch my flight — I should be pretty much set.
Of course, by the time my plane is somewhere over Toledo, I’ll probably remember that I’ve forgotten something absolutely vital, simply because the Fates have deemed that it is impossible for me to go anywhere, even for a weekend, without forgetting something. My bet is that I’ll forget to water the plants, and they’ll all wither and die.
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*When I was, oh, maybe eight or so, I decided to Play Restaurant in my playroom in the basement. I had a whole menu planned out of things I could make by myself, and coerced my long-suffering but supportive parents into agreeing to be my customers. What I was particularly excited about, and actually pressured the poor grown-ups into ordering, was the “wine” (quotations used intentionally), because I had learned somehow about the relationship between wine and vinegar and, never having had wine in a personal and direct fashion, became convinced that I could turn vinegar back into wine simply by diluting plain, bog-standard white vinegar a bit with water.
I can still remember the looks on their faces. . . . Mom, Dad, I’m sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time, honestly.
