Amazing Miracle Baggage

Just to let you know that I will be incommunicado for a week or so starting next Wednesday. Of course, with what I've got to do before then I may be incommunicado prior to that, but not because I have no access, just because I haven't time to sit at the computer.

Anyway, I'm flying to Sydney for a church conference as one of the Queensland representatives. What is the Queensland Standing Committee thinking sending me?

Some years ago I went to the bother of buying a beautiful wheelie port ('suitcase' for foreigners and mexicans - no, not the real mexicans, just all those who live south of the border).

It was of a standard for all the overseas travel I was dreaming of, matched my back-pack, and had the zip around extra bit for when you have more stuff going home again. I cleverly got the middle size not the portable wardrobe size, nor the tiny could-almost-count-as-cabin-luggage size. I thought I'd done well.

Until I got it home.

At that point I realised that the car trip back to home from Rockhampton had caused the port to swell and stretch to an amazing size. Good thing that the journey wasn't longer, or I'd have split the seams of my car.

Anyway, I use it sometimes, but it really is too big, so I often borrow baggage from my parents, because they have smaller wheelie ports that meet the size requirements of airlines and don't require me to pack extra things just to fill it up.

But next year Mum and Dad are taking us on a big family trip to Malaysia. The typical Mum, Dad and two kids, just adding two spouses (spice?) and a grandchild (and - my mother has pointedly informed us all - any subsequent issue arriving betwixt now and then).

This means that the option of borrowing a port from Mum and Dad is not going to work. So I decided to go this morning and buy a suitable suitcase that I could take to Sydney, and would also be one of the two required for next year.

I vacillated between the 24" and the 26" versions in my preferred model. Yes, for some strange reason they still measure baggage in inches. And litres. (I don't get it, it's a bit like going into a hardware shop and asking for a 1.2 metre length of 2" x 4") Anyway there were 10 litres difference between the two.

I decided to go with the smaller one on the basis that baggage increases in size between the shop in which one buys it and the residence of the purchaser. But I decided to take some time to think about it, rang my parents to see what size theirs were, and went back and looked at them both open again and decided that there wasn't all that much extra room, but that it would be useful to have and the price difference was negligible.

So how surprised was I when I got it home to find that it is huge? (albeit not as huge as my existing one)

... Approximately None! *sigh*