trust me, I’m an engineer…

I came with a lot of luggage; Emirates let you have 2x 23kgs.  Of course I smashed that with 25 and 24, and had my ‘patter’ ready.  The rest was in my ‘little’ rucksac.  The guy at the desk was a complete pain in the ass, though.  He first asked me to weigh my hand luggage.  What?  Who does that?  Which is when I found out it was 16kgs.  I knew it was heavy (I had x4 laptops) but I thought they were interested in size, not weight!  But despite appraising him that I was off to a refugee settlement in Africa, he was having none of it.  He wanted me to reduce the hand luggage to 8kgs and pay for the excess baggage. $60 USD.

Challenge accepted.

Luckily there was a big table across from the check-in desks, right next to the ‘over-size’ bag drop which had weighing scales.  So, I set too.  Out from the check bags came a couple of small, high-density items and my ‘Uganda’ hoodie.  In went a couple of laptops.  So still a little over-weight but I hoped to get a different check-in agent and try the patter again.  The rest of my rucksac became wearable.  I always travel in my cargo pants, so I filled my many pockets with two laptop chargers, a power bank, phone charger, a couple of bags of sweets, toothbrush and 100ml of toothpaste.  My hoodie was stuffed with two notebooks and my reading book.  I wore my leather hat.  The rucksac was now just 8kgs, result!  As I had hoped I got a different check-in agent, and he was a trainee, so was very sympathetric to my patter, as the bags were now 25 and 27…  Another result! 

The joke; they didn’t weigh me before 1^st attempt at check-in, or during 2^nd (successful) attempt.  I had a tag on my bag that said “8kgs”.  After check-in I took my wearable luggage and put it back into my rucksac.  It weighed 16kgs when I boarded.  Gaming the system, no?

To be clear, I actually travel very light heading to East Africa (and Haiti), most of my clothes were in that 8kg rucksac (along with x2 laptops).  The rest is ‘stuff’ I am taking out for the ‘mission’.  In various trips I have taken all-sorts: $400 USD electrical test devices, 500+ covid tests (remember those days?), motorbike batteries (don’t ask), foetal heart monitors, mobile phones (sooo many), and more mundane too; this trip A0 wall-planners (10 of them), battery chargers and batteries, coloured classroom chalk (surprisingly dense), power tools and vehicle battery chargers (x3).

This time also included some parts for an industrial oven (used in making prostheses) from our Swiss partner.  Today I fitted them.  -ish.  The fan was a different size and came without locking nut.  The motor came with a different type of electrical connector, but I think I can make it all work.  I cannibalised a wheelchair for the locking nut for the fan. Electrical connectors, update to follow, I need to think and it is now beer-o’clock. 

After all I am a trained engineer (though that was a very, very long time ago – the 1980s in fact).