Pre-Departure

25/9 PRE-DEPARTURE

Everything seemed to be running smoothly. Houses were moved out of, stuff stuffed in every spare corner of my parents’ house, friends said goodbye to. All that was left to do was pack the last few things leave for the airport at 12.45 and say final goodbyes to my parents and girlfriend. Too easy.

Or so I thought. For the first time in living memory I managed to lock myself out of the house at 10.30, with no packing done. That’s OK, Luke’s at cricket training I’ll just call him to bring his key over. My phone told me I had 70c left, which was spent talking to Luke’s colleague to whom he had his phone diverted. Send him a message she suggested as the last of my credit ran out. From a phone box I called Tim, the only other person in Melbourne with a spare key, but no response.

I headed back to the house, increasingly fraught girlfriend by my side. At the back was the garage roller door into the backyard. From the guys having a party in the alleyway I was able to borrow a ladder, lent it up against the garage door and climbed to the top. From over a storey up I surveyed my options. I grabbed the short metal pole jutting out of the garage door and the top of the carport support pole. Swinging in mid-air I looked down onto uneven ground. I pushed off the wall to get some momentum, let go, aimed for level ground a couple of metres away, and with a “please don’t hurt myself” running through my head I landed. Safe.

I hit the garage opening mechanism, and as the door scrolled up I expected a “your such a hero” but got a “oh my God!” instead. Looking down, I saw that one of my girlfriend’s dogs was bleeding from her eye. It was 11am.

Quickly into the house we grabbed the car keys and were quickly on the road to the doggie hospital. And when I say ‘hospital’ I mean it – better facilities were never afforded to the care of those in the third world. After quick admittance the vet cheerfully told us that the dog would need stitches, and would we (chuckle) mind paying the $300 bill. Sure, we said.

Back home at 12am I went to my ‘to-do’ list, only to discover it was missing. Every bit and piece I could think of got stuffed into various bags – after all, I’d been given up to a 40kg limit so there’d be no problem. My clothes and uni books were already packed, so I gathered my laptop and toiletries and sealed the main case. My cricket bat went in the backpack, and guitar case closed with a satisfying thud.

My parents arrived with the wagon, we loaded everything in and got to the airport. The first bag weighed 16kg, the guitar 6kg, and the suitcase 31kg. Holy Shit! “Hey man, I’m going for a year, can you help me?” He was quiet and just started processing things. I was quiet. He gave me my boarding pass. I left.

TRAVEL TIP #1: It never helps to be a jerk at the first instance.
TRAVEL TIP #2: Just shut up sometimes. They don’t want a hassle and if what you want is their path of least resistance that’s what you’ll get.