Packing Light

Here’s the problem with travelling with a trombone: you have to travel with a trombone.

I’ve always considered myself a good packer, but it doesn’t matter how skilfully I’ve picked out my clothes or how well I squish everything in, at the end of the day I still have to carry around a massive trombone.

Last week I had my biggest packing challenge yet: to get my trombone and backpack on a Ryan Air flight as one bag weighing under 15kg.

I wasn’t particularly worried about the weight, I knew I could get it under 15kg if I tried really, really hard, it was the ‘one bag’ part that concerned me. I voiced this concern to my travel agent before I left.
“Just wrap them together” she said casually.

Of course! It was genius! Suddenly my whole notion of basic words changed. ‘What is a bag?’ ‘What is one?' The lines started to get blurry.

In the days leading up to my flight, I started hearing horror stories about how mean Ryan Air is when it comes to baggage. When I told people my plan, they were sceptical.
‘I don’t think that will work’
‘Seriously, I wouldn’t’
‘I’m not sure if you can pull this off’

Sounded like a challenge to me.
Alas, couch surfer Magnus made a suggestion that seemed to be a lot more logical.
‘Can you put the trombone in your backpack?’
Yes I could (with about 30cm sticking out the top).
I sighed, this was going to be far too easy.
I covered the sticking out trombone with my backpack‘s raincoat, and wrapped it in duct tape.

As you can see, it looks a lot like one bag. I had no problems with Ryan Air, the girl checking in didn‘t even look at it.

I understand that in some ways this is far less impressive than the top photo, but I still think it’s pretty impressive that I managed to fit a trombone in my backpack. I think I can say that aside from the trombone, I did pack light.