Au Revoir Russell, Goodbye Gear

We sent home our ski gear today. Russell was the first to leave for home of those who came along to Meribel to ski and send us off. A life lesson we’ve learned from skiing is to keep your knees bent. Being flexible makes it much easier to absorb the shock of impact. We had planned to ship our extra two suitcases and two ski bags both to and from France. After being told about the cost and crazy paperwork, things began to shift. I wrote earlier about dragging them through the subways of Paris and the family’s revolt at the thought of repeating the process from the hotel to the train station.

Once we reached Meribel, we ran through our options, from leaving our stuff behind to bringing in our own carrier service. The latter seems to have worked nicely. John’s brother in law has dreamed of skiing here for a lifetime, but it was economically bad timing for him to join us. So, we made a new plan. We’d use some of our airline miles to get him here. Knowing we had several friends coming, we had rented a large house, and there was an extra bed in the “boys” room, just waiting for him. He packed light, and took two large bags full of our ski gear with him in the taxi this morning. He got to ski France and we got to both enjoy his company and avoid further hassle with most of our ski things.

Marlie’s we are leaving behind. She’s almost outgrown everything anyway, and the owner of the house we have rented has smaller children. That leaves John’s gear, hopefully the last of the ski buddies to head home can manage the extra stuff. The answers may not always be obvious, but sometimes they can make several people happy.