Leaving the US

Even after disposing or shipping many of my belongings, I still had a large duffel bag, a small suitcase, my laptop bag and my bike box to get on the plane. And it wasn’t one of those “overnight duffel bags” that you can just throw over your shoulder. This bag was 0.8 kilos over the 32 kilo limit set by British Airways and it doesn’t even have wheels, like it should:

Karrie said she would take stuff back to Berkeley and eventually to Australia where we are meeting for Goldschmidt, so after taking out a rock (what kind of geologist doesn’t bring any rocks with them to a new job?), some contact solution and a towel, I was safely under the weight limit by 0.2 kilos and ready to go. I would like to note two things here: (1) Karrie said I could pick up another towel when I got to Switzerland and (2) I was starting to feel a little under the weather but chalked it up to not getting much sleep the night before and my adrenaline finally running out.

I love British Airways. They didn’t blink at my large, excessively heavy baggage (did I mention that I ended up packing a bunch of tools into the bike box so it weighed almost 30 kilos?). They checked my bags all the way through to Zurich even though I bought two separate tickets (San Francisco – Heathrow and Heathrow – Zurich). The flight attendants were actually pleasant, speak 4 languages, and brought around beverages regularly. I wish I could have enjoyed it more because for most of the flight I was either feverish or having chills. I couldn’t work up the energy to turn on my in-seat television (one of the reasons I chose BA over Lufthansa) nevermind work on the knitting project I brought along. By the time we arrived at Heathrow I was quite a mess, and after waiting in the “transfer” line for more than an hour I barely made it to the pharmacy for some flu meds. This got my fever under control and brought me a (false) sense of security that I was on the mend.