Mr. Fatty Duffel

I'm sitting at the airport waiting to board the flight for the first leg of our journey, destination Chicago. At this point if I've forgotten to pack anything it's too late.

Speaking of packing... while not out-right hostile, Dawn has been less than supportive of my packing activities. There have been sly comments about the excessive fatty weight of my duffel bag. There have been talks about the importance of “editing our selections.” It's like living with a travel-oriented Tim Gunn.

Last night I responded to these packing accusations by taking a long and measured look at my choices. The key word being measured. Now might be a good time to mention the fact that I bought packing cubes for this trip. The contents of my duffel bag are all compartmentalized into individual cubes. My luggage is truly modular! I took each cube out and weighed it on a kitchen sale to figure out what types of items were contributing the most weight to my bag. Here's the breakdown:
5 lbs pants
2 ½ lbs underwear
2 lbs socks
7 lbs shirts
2 lbs shoes
4 ½ lbs jackets

For a total of 23 lbs of stuff. Shirts were my worst offenders so I decided to see if I needed all the shirts I packed. I ended up taking about a pound of shirts out. Dawn weighed my suede jacket and declared that it weighted exactly the same as a bottle of scotch so I could wear my jacket if we needed to carry an extra bottle of scotch off the island. I successfully defended the rest of my item selections. I justified my two pounds of socks by pointing out that I also had two pounds of shoes...so that just makes sense.