I was woken up by my alarm at 5:30am from a really deep sleep. I had gone to sleep around midnight; this was my longest uninterrupted sleep in a month. Man that felt great! What a luxury. Best sleep ever!
I rifled through my luggage for awhile and jettisoned all non-essentials as I had researched the cost of overweight baggage ($250each). Since I had weighed by bags the prior day I knew I had to shed weight in one bag and I was still carrying a 5th bag that I knew I needed to lose since checking a 3rd bag would be $300 and I already knew my 2nd checked bag was going to cost $100. I continued to put anything small and heavy in my backpack which was already pregnant and overdue:-)
Next I had to shuttle my baggage downstairs as it was impossible to carry everything at once without breaking into an immediate sweat. Fortunately no one lugged a bag off while I was getting the remainder.
I almost left the hotel without formally checking out as I sometimes do in the US, but fortunately I took the time to stop at the front desk. Apparently that's the custom as they needed my credit card to complete the checkout process.
I got lost driving to the airport as the map I was following for the area near the airport was from prior to the airport reconstruction. I could see the control tower but couldn't find the rental car return. I even found the offsite lot where they process the rental cars but it was not for returns. Try as I might, I could not find a sign that said "rental car return" just a whole lotta signs in some foreign language. Someone was not thinking of me when they designed this place. Eventually I drove by a parking ramp and recognized the logo of the rental car company, EuropCar. Voilà! Merci beaucoup!!
I checked in my little Fiat and relieved it of its heavy burden. Fortunately there was a trolley cart nearby so I could exercise my balancing act once again.
I eventually found the correct terminal for Lufthansa and a super-helpful gate agent. We weighed my bags. 23Kg for one (the limit) and 23.5 for the other. She said it was good. Wow! I had been prepared to go through another quick weight-loss process right there on the airport floor so fortunately I was spared that exercise. Then she did a double take on my first flight and said there was insufficient room for a second carry-on. She would have to take one of my carry-ons and check it. No charge!
Things are looking up as this bag definitely wouldn't fit in any carry-on sizing gadget so I was going to have to hope along the way that no one gave me a hard time about it. Of course, my backpack won't fit in one of those either but I've never had gate personnel stop me for a backpack before.
So that just left me and my backpack to go through security. Of course there are lots of people in this serpentine line where icons show to put certain types of items the ubiquitous plastic trays. Of course almost everything in my backpack qualifies for removal. I took out my two laptops, a camera and a few other items to put up a good show of effort but the security lady that was placing the items into the scanner just frowned disapprovingly mumbled something in French then because she didn't know what else to do, out my bag through. I walked through and watched the agent review the X-ray of my bag. It was just a big blob of black. But off to the side (in a side pocket actually) was something dark and identifiable. The CO2 cartridge for my life vest. She circled it and sent my bag down an alternate conveyor for "bad bags". It did the roll of shame to the French TSA-equivalent agent where she informed me that that was "prohibited! You understand?" I put up a small argument in my defense that it was for a life jacket, it was properly marked, and that I had flown to France with it previously. Apparently my argument was falling on deaf ears as she didn't speak English. She repeated her "prohibited!" declaration so I signed her form and moved on.
On to my gate with two hours to spare.
-Greg
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