The plan was pretty simple, take 3 weeks off and head to Europe for a break, take in 3 countries and their capital cities.

Eat Food.

Drink Beer.

Be tourists.

Follow up:

All was going along smoothly, our stuff was packed, our hiking packs’ tags and tabs lashed and cling wrapped to protect them from their only known predator - the airline baggage conveyor belt.

First aside (for this blog)

We’re hikers, so our packs are designed for “drive to a carpark, get out, walk for 5 days, throw now stinking packs back in the car, drive home”. To enable a person to strap 25-30 kilos to their backs aforementioned packs NEED to be tough, (they are) they also need to have about 4,000 straps hanging off them to enable a fair distribution of load. Therein lies the issue. Straps have an unfortunate habit of getting snagged in anything that could be considered a moving part. Baggage conveyors have moving parts. A lot of them. These moving parts can (regularly) turn your beloved pack from a $1000 piece of hiking art to an interesting canvas duffle bag , useful for storing sporting goods in the back of a cupboard.

SO…
All things were moving along swimmingly, I had managed to coerce my partner in crime to leave at a time that allowed at least some room to move should anything go wrong (Karma is a ‘just in time’ person - a trait that I have been unable to talk her out of, if she has to be ANYWHERE at specific time, and it takes 30 minutes to get to said ANYWHERE, she will leave exactly 29 minutes before expected time, with the view that she’ll make up time on the way, a plan that in the 19 years I’ve known her is yet to bear fruit) of course my longsuffering bride couldn’t leave it at that…

…”What could possibly go wrong?” she uttered after realising I had got my way regarding leaving time.

Something I am not a fan of is throwing rocks at the “what could go wrong” gods.

I mentioned my concern about the challenge to the deities, which at this stage was met with a stare so withering I decided to cut my losses and comfort myself in the short term win.

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