Well everything is set and I’m off today. Which means the ‘P-Word’ rears its ugly head. Packing…
Now I fully understand why airlines need to impose baggage limits on their customers. If they didn’t people would be buying cheap tickets and hauling all sorts of freight all over the world at very cheap prices. And they couldn’t have that, could they? In fact, up ’til around the early 90s you could approach courier companies and get them to buy you a ticket somewhere nice as long as you were prepared to give up some of your space to carry their packages and deliver them to somebody at the airport the other end. In practice this meant you took everything as normal and tried to blag your way onto the plane with about 50kg of luggage and, to be honest, 9 times out of 10 this worked.
This very system got me to Singapore about 15 years ago for a trip through South East Asia. I was so chuffed with the result that on the first night me and my mate quaffed both litres of duty free vodka we’d purchased at Heathrow and the ensuing party with a bunch of Aussie girls with whom we were sharing some sort of insalubrious accommodation got so out of hand that we all got banged up in Changi Prison for the next two weeks. But that’s another story… Luckily the World Champs will never be in Singapore as I think I’m still not allowed back in for ‘Insulting His Excellency’s Pleasure’, as it said on my deportation documents.
Anyway, back to the packing. There was a time that a paraglider was a passport to easy travelling freedom around the World. Lightweight kit still is but you’re not going to be winning many tasks flying that, so it’s the full ‘Battle Tank’ of tube harness and associated gubbins that I’ll be hauling out today.
Iberia (who are not known for getting both passenger and luggage to the same continent with any great reliability) impose a quite generous 23kg times 2 for my flight and 8kg of hand luggage. I’m going to try and make that 23kg times one plus a sneakily heavy piece of hand luggage.
So the big bag first. Glider goes into a vacuum bag which makes it smaller. I have an extra large Sup Air back protector to replace the ‘egg box’ jobbie that came with my original harness and this gets rolled up to reduce size. Harness goes in with lightweight Extra Large Sup’Air reserve (checked for mice and fortunately clear) and helmet and the whole lot is shoved into my glider bag. Should be about 21kg though I’ve noticed the new glider is a bit heavier than the old one and so is the new Gin Race harness so perhaps more like 23kg and bang on the limit.
Now for the tricky bit. You’ve probably noticed I am travelling with no clothes or anything other than flying kit so far. In fact all my stuff for a two week stay travels either on my body (I wear it) or in my hand luggage. This makes my hand luggage about 18kg and not acceptable. The way round this is to wear clothing with many, many pockets and to put radios, batteries, varios, cameras, chargers and all other paraphernalia in them. This gives a clunky jacket weighing about 8kg to tie around my waist. Into my trouser pockets go wallets, phones, paperwork, toiletries and anything else mildly heavy. Round my waist go any fleeces or warm clothes and I tie my flip-flops to my belt and wear my flying boots. This leaves my hand luggage with a laptop, 5 t-shirts, some underwear and some odds and ends in it. It also leaves it very light.
At check in the bulky paragliding bag will be in the weight range as will my hand luggage. I will offer to take the bag to ‘Outsize Luggage’ to be helpful to the check-in staff and on the way will craftily nip out of the terminal and find a quiet spot. There I can stuff all the heavy stuff I’ve been carrying back into my glider bag so I’m not really uncomfortable on the flight and re-pack my hand luggage with all the crap from my pockets. At ‘Outsize Baggage’ they don’t weigh the glider bag so it should all go on and as my hand luggage will have the correct sticker on it I should sail onto the plane without trouble.
Well, that’s how I’m hoping it will all work anyway. If I turn up in Mexico several hundred dollars poorer and swearing about excess baggage charges you’ll know I got rumbled.
Mark H
