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Friday, 10 June 2005
Sweden, day 0 ::
4-6:45 pm PDT Wed: Despite Justin never before having been charged for excess baggage, we’d agreed that we would pack as if we were going to. The pictures in the previous entry are the culmination of a couple hours of stuffing things into containers, weighing them, and moving things to keep bags under 70 lbs. In the end, a suitcase and a utility container each contained about half my clothes, a couple of reels of 2” tape, and some gear. Extra stuff (including clothes) got jammed into corners of the 140 lb. behemoth digital piano flight case. Justin did a similar balancing act with his stuff.
8:45 pm: Justin dropped me and the luggage outside the international terminal at SFO, returned the rented minivan, and reappeared 12 minutes later. Shuttled the bags to a spot near Icelandair’s checkin counter. We got noticed and asked to bring everything to the far counter where we got special attention. Justin had called ahead to tell them about the giant item. Not only did they make no mention of the theoretical $220 surcharge for the overweight, oversized flight case (when we each were already flying with our full allowance of 2 70 lb items), but an agent wheeled the case to the special oversize TSA check station for us. New favorite airline: Icelandair.
11:30 pm PDT Wed - 3:00 pm GMT Thu: got perhaps 4 or 5 solid hours of sleep on the plane.
9:30 pm GMT+0200: arrived Copenhagen without Justin’s clothes. SAS agent was very helpful (though she kept joking about wanting Justin’s hat). Major endeavor getting all the gear onto train to Malmö. Fortunately two friends of Justin’s had met our plane and helped. Train very crowded; almost comical scene. Worked out fine in the end, but on my return I will arrange ground transport to airport.
1:00 am GMT+0200 Just a little under 24 hours after meeting Justin outside my apartment, we arrived at the studio guest house. Fell asleep quickly.
| << On our way | 2005 > June | Sweden, day 1 >> |