My last post dealt with moving which I am going to try very, very hard never to do again or put it off until I am so old and feeble that my children will have to do it.  Now I will talk about packing for this 6-8 month journey which I quickly realized in terms of clothes was  really packing for a 2 week vacation but with clothes for weddings, bar mitzvahs and a bit of all kinds of weather.  Much thinking needed to go into this.  I decided to keep my clothes black, white and tan with color thrown in for tops and shoes.  I tried on, shopped, matched, made piles of what I was definitely taking and what I might take.  I added, subtracted and spent many of my newly retired hours plotting my choices.  Thus I left with one duffle, one hanging bag and 1/2 of a shared shoe,cold weather and overnight bag.  

Russell left with twice as much stuff as me including 4 hanging bags.   He insisted we bring these 2 rectangular storage bins to hold more stuff.  His strategy was to take everything he owned including 11 pairs of pants, about 30 shirts and get this - 38 PAIRS OF SOCKS!  

I begged him not to do this but he kept insisting we had the room.  I even went thru his 4 hanging cases and duffle the morning we left - Sam, whom we stayed with is my witness - and made him get rid of about 20% of the stuff, but last night the trip almost ended before it really began when he looked at me and announced we had too much stuff in a tone that inferred it was my fault.  Needless to say a good 1/3 of this stuff will be deposited in our storage unit in Rochester when we return at the end of July.  I  love being right.  

And I promise I have just one more post that is not travel related.  The rest of my posts will deal with our trip but the next one will start out with as Linda Kirshen suggested...  On our last night in Rochester, our generous, warm, loving friends threw us a fabulous party (which they did).