Leavin.. on a jet plane (ugh.. again)

Well, I'm leaving out of here on Sunday afternoon. It's official. I called and booked plane tickets yesterday morning. Now, with the short notice, I've been in a mad rush to accomplish all the things I need to in order to get out of here on time.

It took me 6 hours and $733.00 later before I had managed to get together all the things I need for this trip. You'd think that after having been over there so many times it would be cheaper after awhile? Not so much. I spent $290.00 on a backpack today... can you believe that crap? For that much money I expected it to drive itself the other stores and then pack itself and perform its own baggage check, but nope, it's just a bag to hold crap.

I promise I don't make a habit of foolishly spending frivolously on stuff. Most often I spend forever doing comparison shopping online, then browsing stores, and eventually I settle on something in the middle of the price range. However, this makes my 6th trip to Africa and I've never had a laptop bag survive more than one trip. I started with the 39.99 from Wal-Mart, later upgraded to a 65.00 one when the first one died after a trip, then upgraded to a 130.00 one when THAT one died. After one trip, I had to replace the 130.00 with another one just like it (under warranty thankfully) and then the same problem happened to the replacement one and now they won't warranty that one...

Considering that we usually have to carry a $1600.00 laptop, a $500.00 GPS, multiple $100.00 external drives, $250 Ipaqs, $250.00  digital cameras, $400 world phones, and a $300.00 iPod, we need something that can protect our materials. This one came with a "no-matter-what" warranty for 25 years... so I'm going to put it to the test. Can you tell I'm still trying to justify this to myself???  Did you know that a $290.00 backpack is CHEAP nowadays, depending on where you shop? When I grew up the most expensive thing you could buy was L.L. Bean and those were $65.00 or so. I was in high school before my mother could afford to get me one and I've still got it to this day and it's STILL in great shape.  It was such a cool thing to have that I've always taken care of it. And now, eleven years later, I have a freakin' three hundred dollar bag that doesn't even carry itself around on electric wheels or anything.... inflation sucks.

In other news, I've been frantically freaking out while trying to update the web site, shopping cart, and forums for NCBBA.org, while trying to build a new site for Robinson Jewelers, specc'ing a new camera job for a company in Raleigh, trying to setup a new phase of our current project, getting our equipment that's 4 months late to ship finally sent out of the country, locating new vendors that can handle industrial fulfillment quantities, trying to purchase three new cars from the Netherlands and have them shipped to Africa, and then finally working on updating my iPod with new money.

Oh yeah.. crud... I started this post so I could post my flight info for my family and April to be able to get to if they need to. So, here it is:

SERVICE        FROM                TO

-------------- ------------------- ---------------------

UNITED AIRLINES - UA 168

SUN 28OCT      RALEIGH DURHAM NC   WASHINGTON DC

NON STOP       RALEIGH D           DULLES INTL

               1440                1557

               EQUIPMENT:BOEING 737-500

               RESERVATION CONFIRMED

BRITISH AIRWAYS - BA 216           WORLD TRAVELLER

SUN 28OCT      WASHINGTON DC       LONDON GB

NON STOP       DULLES INTL         HEATHROW

               1945                0650  29OCT

               EQUIPMENT:BOEING 777-200/300

               RESERVATION CONFIRMED

BRITISH AIRWAYS - BA 898           WORLD TRAVELLER

MON 29OCT      LONDON GB           TRIPOLI LY

NON STOP       HEATHROW            INTERNATIONAL

               0930                1500

               EQUIPMENT:AIRBUS INDUSTRIE A320-100/200

               RESERVATION CONFIRMED

 

OK. I'll post some more in a bit.