My blue "superluggage" (as Scott would call it) was at least a decade old, and battered and broken from far too much rough-housing. The zipper pulls were gone, the wheels were often stuck and the handles were getting wonky. In fact, on one recent outbound trip I collected my case from the carousel to find the pull-out handle stuck permanently in the 'down' position... super uncomfortable to wheel, and far to heavy to carry. For the return journey, I managed to jimmy the handle into the 'up' position - where it was stuck and had to be checked in 'as-is'. When I picked it up at the Vancouver Airport at the other end of the flight, the handle had been thoughfully unstuck .. and had a couple of new metal springs sticking out the side of the handle. Customized baggage-handler-modifications, perhaps?
But the worst of all was it was heavy. With weight limits for checked baggage being increasingly tight, it seemed like a waste to start out with an empty case that already felt like 10 pounds. A timely sale at the Bay (where luggage is almost always on sale anyway) led me to my new suitcase - a little smaller, but the lightest model out there! It's also a chic grey with crisp and cheerful yellow highlights - easy to spot on the carousel.
The second item was for something that was only five years old but still due for a replacement... that's right, I needed a new passport. While I'm looking forward to the day that Canada adopts 10-year passports like most reasonable countries, I'm happy to report that the renewal process is significantly easier than the last time I did so, and I can now travel outside of our borders up to August 2016.
I'm ready to hit the road again!
