Oh, what’s 20 pounds between friends?

(I'm in Canada now, using the Toronto Airport's free wireless. Yay, Canada.)

My trip to China had a lively start this morning. As soon as we got to the airport, we returned our rental car and checked in at the Air Canada kiosk. Everything was going smoothly until I overheard my dad say to the attendant, “50 pounds?! I thought that the weight limit was 70 pounds.”

Great.

I don’t have much experience with international flights, but according to my parents, weight limits for several carriers used to be 70 pounds. With this guideline in mind, my mom and dad had purposefully condensed our packing and had combined several small suitcases into the titans of luggage that we were now dragging around Hartsfield International. My suitcase cleared the limit (by 0.5 pounds), but my parents’ suitcases were over by a combined total of 30+ pounds.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that I have a reputation for being cheap. Here, I’d like to illustrate that it’s genetic – or at least socially conditioned in my upbringing. My father was not about to pay the $60 heavy baggage fine for the two suitcases. So instead, he decided to eviscerate them both right then and there, in front of check-in. Out came our clothing, clothing for other people, food (gifts), picture frames (more gifts), etc. And to my parents’ credit (I would have just purchased another suitcase), they managed to cram 20+ lbs of stuff into what was previously a carry-on bag and distribute the rest of the spoils amongst us. (I am now carrying two cameras, a battery of… assorted batteries, and several camcorder tapes.) And the final weigh-in for the two bags? 50.0 lbs (he got one on the dot) and 51.0 lbs (acceptable, said the attendant).

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been that surprised. When I was 6, my father once bet a peach farmer in Alabama that he could fit all of the peaches we had picked into one basket. The farmer, having 20+ years of experience in his enterprise, begged to differ. So being an engineer, my dad bent the previously ellipsoid basket to a more spherical shape (to maximize the volume to surface area ratio, I kid you not) and fit every last one of the damned peaches into the basket. Victory. We drove away from the farm (and one very angry farmer) with a trunk full of peaches. (We’re a family of 3. I ate peaches for about a month…)

So this morning’s events have yielded $60 of spared income that I can now spend in China. That’s pretty, er…, peachy if you ask me.