Getting out the Door- Departure Week

Departure week is always a beast, but this was the most wild and ferocious one that Mark and I have experienced to date.  The schedule went a little something like this:

On Wednesday, I had my last day of work at Bray and Company, the best company a student/traveler like myself could ever ask to be employed by.  Over the past four years, Bray and Company has patiently endured my incredibly flexible schedules.  On four separate occasions (SE Asia, Mexico, India, and Canada) I was given 6 weeks off with a job to return to.  As a part-time employee, my co-workers celebrated my entrances and supported my exits.  Yes, they were quite possibly the best employer a student traveler like myself could have ever asked to work with.

On Thursday, in accordance with the previous month’s schedule, I set my alarm for 6 a.m. so that I could study for GMAT exam.  When Mark woke up and headed to work (updating tile for a beautiful kitchen remodel at the Manchiem’s), I started packing our room into totes bound for storage, then headed to the math tutors at Mesa State College for my daily 2 hour study session.  I would have never thought to get free tutoring for a grad school exam from a school that I had already graduated from, but Amber Rich, a friend and former graduate now attending USC, did it, and I thought it was a great idea.  In exchange for sharing their mathematical brilliance, I presented them with pumpkin bread and Nanaimo bars.  After studying, I ran the final errands for our trip including a trip to the banks to notify them of our travel plans so that our ATM withdrawls wouldn’t end up suspending our accounts like an online Nigerian scam.  I also gathered the last of our gear,  a few additional travel bottles (there’s no such thing as too many tiny bottles with screw on lids) and soap from REI (to keep away the Nalgene bottle’s lid funk).  I studied for another hour and called Mark to see how the job was coming along.  It was 6 pm and he was planning to finish up around 10 pm, so I brought him some milk and helped him sponge up the tile and tape off the new backsplash and countertops so that they wouldn’t get painted on in the following days.  We were home by 10 pm, and I set about re-arranging my travel bag while we talked about the final dash to the finish line.

On Friday morning, I was up again by 6 am, and drove myself to Starbucks to study again for the GMAT while enjoying my (gasp) final latte.  It seemed that in the preceeding weeks before a trip, there was no end to the “last” of this and that.  Nearly every meal was approached as my “last”- the baklava at work, the turkey and twice baked potatos at the house, the daily Starbucks latte.  As I drove to Starbucks, I knew I hadn’t been sleeping enough and was running on nerves because I got choked up just seeing the “poor little dears” loading onto a school bus in the dark.  I finalized our accounts so that our bills were paid through the next five months and continued packing our room for storage.  The piles of totes seemed like they were taking over the house- how was it that we accumulated so much crap?  Lori, Mark’s mom, packed up our kitchen belongings, and I realized we had moved in more items that I had previously cared to notice.  Mark and I packed up his tools at the jobsite and moved them into a storage unit full of shelves that we had built at his dad’s place a couple of months back.  We had hoped to leave town around 5 pm, but by the time we had moved everything into storage, it was already after 7 pm.  Justin, a fellow Outdoor Program student, joined us in the cab of Mark’s dad’s Chevy Duramax diesel dually truck, and with a stop at the Taco Bell, we were on our way to Denver.  We quickly discovered that blizzard conditions over the I-70 had necessitated road closures which meant we would be re-routed through the heart of the Rockies, our old stomping grounds, Leadville.   It was a long night, and we didn’t arrive at Sunshine and Marc’s house until after 3 am. 

Unfortunately, I had a test to wake up for, and when the alarm went off at 5 am, I didn’t exactly feel rested on my whopping 1.5 hours of sleep.  I borrowed Sunshine’s Saturn and drove 50 minutes in the dark, across town to Westminster’s Perkins where I added an egg and piece of toast to the gut rot in my tired stomach.  As I studied for the GMAT, I found my eyes closing and head bobbing.  By 7:30 am, I was in the parking lot of Westminster’s Pearson Hall Test Center.  The 4 hour test went smoothly, no emotional episodes or fits of sleep deprivation (although I really wanted to leave mid-way through the test; I knew I was moving too slowly and getting frustrated in the math section which meant I wasn’t scoring well).  The test results were immediate.  Ironically, my verbal score increased (shocking considering that I didn’t study that section this time around), but my math score didn’t budge one bit (disappointing considering the effort I had put in over the past month).  I was bummed, but surprisingly not as disheartened this time around- admittedly, this was atypical behavior for a perfectionist such as myself.  I came to the conclusion that I had truly given it my best effort, and that if fast-paced math wasn’t one of my noteworthy accomplishments in life, I could live with that.

I drove back to Aurora, the Denver suburb where we were staying, and as I entered the door, I heard James, my adorable 3 year old nephew scream with excitement, “Aunt Annie’s here!”  He was riding his brand new ATV in the living room and was elated to have a passenger.  After pinching his brother Malachai’s cute lil’ cheeks (yep, I’m THAT aunt), Mark and I rushed out to exchange my REI Tech Beast rolling duffle bag for a 35” Rolling Beast- it was a brand new bag, but the seam had already let loose and I couldn’t have that continuing during the trip.  A note about why I love REI: when I purchased the first bag, I used a 20% off coupon.  When I exchanged it, they gave me that same discount on the second bag which allowed me to buy more stuff to pack in it.  REI rocks.  In contrast, our AAA luggage scale that we bought for the trip was a bust (literally).  We ended up at Colorado Luggage in the Park Meadows mall springing for a $27.00 digital scale.  On the way out, Mark and I were both feeling racked, so we thought we’d treat ourselves to massages, but when we attempted to negotiate a discount rate for two we discovered that the Asians at the massage booth in Park Meadows Mall don’t offer the kind of bargains we had become accustomed to in Southeast Asia.  Darn set prices.

Back at Sunshine’s, Marc treated us to one of his specialty treats, a cheesy baked seafood and salmon dish.  We wanted to socialize afterwards, but Mark had two final papers to research and I was still running on 1.5 hours of sleep and a cup of tea, so we collapsed into bed at 8 pm.  Mark set his alarm for midnight so that he could get up and research using his inter-library loan books during the remainder of the night.   The papers could be written during the airplane ride, but the research books needed to be returned to the school, so this was the only available option.

When I woke up, I reapportioned our bags so that we wouldn’t have to pay for excess baggage fees (we each were packing about 70 lbs of gear, and the airline only allows 50 per bag, so we temporarily divvied out the extra pounds into a third duffle bag).  Sunshine, who is not known for being a morning gal, graciously drove us to the airport in her purple fleece pajamas.  As we wheeled our duffle bags into Denver International Airport, the excitement was mounting.  Despite the past weeks of exertion, we were on our way to Africa.