Caravan

It's 11:00 PM (sorry... make that 23:00) and I've been here a week. Wow. To say that these seven days have been a blur doesn't begin to do justice to the level of chaos that has defined our lives since we left the cozy confines of 356 Highland last Friday evening.

Undeterred by the deluge that accompanied our two-SUV procession from Somerville to Logan International, we somehow got our 14 pieces of luggage (we'll revisit that issue later) from the curb to the counter and commenced checking in. From check-in through take-off was largely uneventful and even the flight was relatively pain-free, with Amy and I taking turns pacifying one screaming child or another (little tidbit of advice for traveling parents: when your toddler is peacefully sleeping in-flight, do NOT try to recline her seat "to make her more comfortable." Bad things happen. Bad things. Just take my word for it). In between, we each actually got an hour or two of sleep. What luxury! And a glass of cognac before bed! Hey, this international travel thing is a breeze. Even the connection in Frankfurt was seamless. They have a separate "family" security area for traveling circuses like ours. In-flight cognac, family security screening... these Germans know what they're doing.

As much as the first two legs of our adventure were without significant drama, I knew... I just KNEW we had that train ride... and those 14 pieces of luggage... I knew there was no way it was going to end well.

Now, to revisit our luggage situation, we each had two large bags, as was our allotment. Now when I say "large," I mean large, as in, within about 11 grams of the 50 pound maximum limit. Having spent several hours immediately prior to leaving playing "move this sock from this bag to that one. Now get back on the scale!" I had ensured that we gave up not an ounce of our share of the cargo hold. And that's not to mention that one piece was my bike, packaged in a not-exactly-compact cardboard box. In addition, we had two rolling carry-ons, two small(ish) backpacks, two car seats, and the stroller. That's actually 15 items if you're keeping score at home but we chose not to count the stroller. On what basis? Amy decreed that it shouldn't count. I know better than to argue with that logic.

It was a collection of stuff that would have made George Carlin cringe... and we couldn't live without it. Now the question was: how to get it to the train station and did we stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting it all on the train?