The trip home

The trip home went really really fine. I have never had so little trouble traveling and I've never had so much luggage. I of course figured out a way to not let them weigh my carry-on because it was way over the 10 or 15 pounds that is allowed. The only thing that actually was behind schedule all the way back was loading the car, so I headed out about half an hour later than planned. I drove to the airport down Lincoln in no traffic at all, very different than driving to work. When I got to the airport I parked the car at the temporary parking lot and found a trolley for my bags. I took only the check in bags and loaded all 4 on the trolley. They were of course weighted at the airport and the lightest one was 48,5 pounds and the heaviest one was 51 pounds. The travel-luggage scale I bought totally paid of. There was no line at all, so everything went really fast. After the check-in I went and returned the car at the car rental place, again no line and everything was superfast. My carry-on was a 30 pound suitcase, my overloaded purse (with the suction cup of the GPS unit sticking out of it) and a very heavy winter jacket that I just could not fit in any of my bags so I just decided to have that over my shoulder. Since I did not have my carry-on at check in, nobody ever questioned the weight of my suitcase so I got throught the security gate just fine. Actually when on board the plane I had so much trouble lifting my suitcase into the overhead compartment because of it's weight, but finally with balancing on end on my head and then use both hands for the other end I managed to lift it high enough to slide it in there.
I had to wait 4 hours in Minneapolis for my second plane but since my bags were checked in all the way to Iceland I had no hassle at all. I really had pictured myself claiming my bags and doing the checkin all over again. The boarding actually was a bit hilarious. They started boarding families with children and over the intercom somebody actually said "we are now ready to board families with children, for prompt boarding please bring all your boarding passes and all your children, if you are also traveling with a spouse one of you should have all the boarding passes and the other one all the children!", and then of course everybody had so much carry-on luggage and boarding took forever. I had actually been pretty bright and when they were asking people with kid's trolleys to bring the trollies so that they could be taken to the luggage area I gave them my very heavy carry-on and totally made it look like I was doing them a favor by "allowing" them to put my bag downstairs. People of couse had so much luggage (I am totally not the only person who shoppes toooo much in USA) that while boarding the intercom announced "Please put all your large items in the overhead compartent and all your small items under the seat in front of you. Only put those items that cannot fit under the seat in front of you in the overhead compartment so that we can accomondate all the passangers". When most of the people were finally on board the airplane intercom announced "we are so sorry for this slight delay which is due to excessive shopping" :) and I thought to myself ..... "ahhh I´m home!!"