It Ain't About the Outfit

Bainbridge Island, Fri. Sept. 5

     How on earth does anyone actually make it onto an airplane?  I have spent the best part of the past two weeks - no, let's be honest; the best part of the past month - putting things in my suitcase, taking them out, changing my mind about the number of T-shirts I should take, remembering to add things in the middle of the night (swimsuit!) and generally stressing about getting ready for my month-long trip in two days.

Lisbon at Sunset

     I should know better.  15 months ago, I made a really bad decision; I checked my bag on a flight to Philadelphia, bound for Manchester and Lisbon.  The connection was three hours late, I was booted off my flight, and relegated to a faceless Manchester airport hotel room (without tea!).  No sign of my bag. It was the weekend before Christmas and not at all clear I would be able to get there (Lisbon) from here.  The next morning I had to take a flight to Paris at 6 a.m., spent the best part of 6 hours tracking down the airline's Lost Luggage area where I filed gobs of paperwork and, for my pains, received a toothbrush and an oversized white T-shirt (clothing?  sleeping?) before finally making it to Lisbon that afternoon.

Our view - Alfama

     Day after day, despite endless promises, my suitcase didn't arrive.  I was told its arrival was imminent, it was in Munich, Istanbul, Afghanistan (I kid you not).  It finally showed up the afternoon before I went home, 10 days later.  I spent those 10 days alternating between two t-shirts and pulling on the same  increasingly grimy pair of jeans every day.  Slightly distateful after the first week, but really?  Worse things could happen.  My memories of that vacation do not revolve around my lack of a wardrobe, but on the sights, sounds and experiences I enjoyed with Bridget.

    As a friend's husband so wisely noted, we're not going to Siberia.  I can buy toothpaste and even a swimsuit in London or Vienna.  So why is it so difficult to choose?  I suspect it's the well-earned fear that we'll stick out like sore thumbs in our Patagonia/REI/North Face Pacific Northwest gear, or that we all secretly have visions of ourselves dressed in our finest? favorite? most flattering? shirt/dress/pants/shoes while we eat strudel or sauerkraut or Cornish pasties in a small cafe in a foreign town, as if it's any different than going to Bainbridge Bakers for coffee. 

Finally...

     On this trip I'm visiting London, walking in Devon, rowing down the Danube, and sightseeing in Vienna and Prague; lots of different clothing needs in the space of a month.  I pride myself on traveling light; just one carryon.  (Not as light as my daughter's friend, who spent a week in Paris with only a large shoulder bag!)  And Rick Steeves notwithstanding, I really appreciate having a few changes of clothes.  Somehow in my fuzzy little brain, however, travel and clothing are linked together in ways I wish I were better at ignoring.

My Crew

     I'm leaving Bainbridge - my sweet dog, my rowing buddies, this beautiful weather - in under 48 hours, checking multiple times per day that I have my passport, credit cards, itinerary and a good book, have left good instructions for the dogsitter, a clean house and a watered garden.  I'm still stressing about how many t-shirts I should take, but really, I've been 99% ready for quite a while.  I'll keep stressing until I'm buckled into my seat, the airplane door is closed, and I can no longer change my mind.  Then I'll sit back and have a whale of a time; I'm not going to Siberia.

     So show what you're made of in Row for the Cure and at Otter Island, Bainbridge; be grateful every day that you get to row in such a beautiful place, with such wonderful weather and with such a great group of people.  I'll be back in the boatyard in a month, wearing the same grubby old rowing clothes.