Test pack Options Three and Four from my last post. Here are the results:
Option Three – We pull all Murray’s dive gear out but no clothes, toiletries etc. We have to play to fit four fins into his bag and still leave room for wetsuit, clothes, dive booties etc. We actually get it to work! There appears to be lots of little spaces to stuff clothes and such in. He usually takes 2 dive mask containers, one with his dive mask and one with assorted small gear in it (compass, extra straps, that sort of thing) but we will have to devise another way for him to carry these. Ziploc bags work great! The bag isn’t overly heavy either. We also talk about him talking a small backpack as a purse instead of his courier bag.
I then repack the Rossi Transit roller bag and my Talon 22 knapsack and it is doable. It is very tight though and if we have forgotten something, we will be in trouble.
This option looks like a possibility.
Option Four – I first pack my knapsack with the items that I definitely want to carry on – camera, housing, regulators, netbook, bathing suit, dive mask. I then pack absolutely everything else on the floor into the Swissgear suitcase. It all fits with room to spare. It only weighs 27 lbs. It is large and bulky and for someone used to going with carry on luggage it looks and acts like a stegosaurus. AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!
The issue I have with checking a bag is that the bag may not make the connection, or will disappear completely, in Houston on the way to Cozumel. I have all this new dive gear and there is a potential that I won’t be able to use it. This would annoy me to no end.
After all that, this is a plausible option too.
What do I do?
I push all the bags and gear into our library and there it sits. I now have to commit.