The Packing

Our plan was to pack all our belongings into suitcases and take them on the plane to Costa Rica with us.  Dale has compared the cost of shipping by container with the extra baggage charges the airline would charge and figured that it was cheaper and easier to fly our stuff with us.  Unfortunately, we grossly underestimated how much space our things would take up and how long it would take to pack them.  Each bag had to weigh as close as possible to 50 lbs. without going over, which would cost an extra $100.  Dale had to meticulously arrange items in a suitcase and repeatedly lift it on the scale to check the weight.  Sometimes he would need to add more items and sometimes he would have to remove some.  It was extremely time consuming and hard on his back.  Even after being at it for days, there was still a lot to do to finish up the night before we were to leave.  I had to make an emergency run to Wal-mart around 11 pm to buy two more suitcases, as it looked like we would run out.  I went to bed when I returned home, hoping Dale would be along soon.  Well, I woke up at 3:30 am and went out into the living room to find him looking totally exhausted and huge piles of things still unpacked.  It was kind of like a scene out of "The Shining".   I knew we were in deep trouble at that point.  I stayed up for a couple of hours trying to help him.  We both laid down to sleep a couple hours before we needed to get up to let in a friend, Jay, who was coming around 9 am to take the rest of the items that we weren't taking with us.  There was a good hour of loading to be done with him plus the moving truck to be picked  up, since all our bags couldn't fit in a regular vehicle, as well as a couple last minute errands, house cleaning and checking out with the new owner's real estate agent. We were also out of suitcase yet again.  I told Dale that we had better just throw everything left into boxes and we could finish packing it all when we got to Phoenix.  We were overbooked in the extreme!  Thanks to Jay's generous help, we managed to leave Sedona at Noon, which was the latest we needed to be on the road to get the pets checked in for their flight.

Jack, Apollo and the cats rode with me in the rental car, while Dale followed in the U-haul.  I had programmed all our stops into the GPS because I knew we would be tight on time and could not afford a single navigational error.  I was a bit worried about driving on so little sleep but it turned out that I was pretty high on adrenaline so ti wasn't a problem.  Jack was in charge of telling me jokes to make sure I didn't get sleepy and lose focus.

We arrived at the United Cargo facility a bit late but still within my time parameters.  Right away there were problems as the clerk said that they crates needed to have soft bedding in them and the food and water cups attached.  Well, I would have loved to have those things but we had been specifically told my United that the crates were not allowed to have anything in them, including bedding and cups, due to post-9/11 regulations.  I felt just sick because we had throw away the cups that had come with the crates because I thought we could not use them.  Fortunately, they had extra cups that attached onto the metal door that they could give us and we had some towels that we hadn't had time to pack in the trunk of the car that we used for their bedding.  They even had frozen water to put in the water cups so that was comforting.  It was a near disaster that turned out alright, a pattern that would be repeated many times over the next 24 hours!

Next stop was to find the Secretary of State office at the Capitol to have them review our paperwork that would need to become residents if we decided to go that route.  It would be difficult to take care of all the paperwork requirements once in Costa Rica so we wanted to get as many documents apostilled as possible and see if any would need to be reordered.  We were all feeling a bit frazzled at that point, having eating almost nothing all day.  Our small convoy navigated through downtown Phoenix and managed to find a great  restaurant where we could recharge with some Pad Thai.  Dale and I analyzed the best way to approach what needed to happen next and came up with our plan of attack.

Now it was time to find our motel, which was blissfully close to the restaurant.  Upon check in, the manager frowned at our U-haul and said that he was totally booked and we could not take up two parking spaces.  This news resulted in a short stare down session, as I mentally calculated the chances of us finding another motel at this late hour (next to none).  I kind of threw up my and said "Well what do you suggest?"  I mean it's not like I could make our U-haul disappear!  I was so hoping for a shower before our flight, the one I had been hoping to take before we left Sedona.  Now I had visions of us sleeping in the rental car at the airport.  I guess he took pity on us or didn't want me to post a bad review on Yelp or something but he went outside and figured out how we could park the rental car in the loading zone next to the U-haul.   We brought some things into our room, then all piled in the U-haul to make a stop and our storage facility to drop off a few more things that we had decided to store.  After unloading things there, we needed to find a Wal-mart for the purchase of a couple more suitcases because, yet again!, we were running short.  We also needed to buy some water because we were all developing this horrible thirst that could not be sated.  I don't know if it was just the stress or what but we were all just nearly crazed for water.

So back to the motel with U-haul and time to finish the packing that hadn't gotten completed at the house.  It was still just a crazy mess of  boxes filled with all kinds of stuff.  We were all showing signs of extreme fatigue be now.  Dale's back was about ready to give out and Jack was staggering in the manner of a zombie.  It was about 9 pm when we got to the motel and I had calculated that we should get to the airport right at 2 am because our flight was at 6 am and four hours was the earliest that you could check baggage in.  I wanted to allow the maximum time to check in our many bags, complete our flight check in (there was extra paperwork that had to be verified before we could get our boarding passes) AND we had to return the U-haul and the rental car and get through security.  That meant that we should get up around 1:30 am to leave the motel .  Jack laid down to try and rest while Dale and pretty much just threw things into the suitcases and weighed them, without much regard for orderliness.  Finally about 11 pm we both laid down but in the process woke Jack up which meant that now he couldn't get back to sleep.  So for the next two hours, we were all taking turns getting up and down, drinking water and tossing and turning.  I think we all finally fell asleep about 1 am, just in time for the alarm to go off at 1:30.  Off to the airport we went, groggy as can be!
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