ED Memories: August 10, 2023

Thursday, August 10, 2023

It's travel day, and final pack up in the morning which goes OK. We have to shuffle things around between bags to make sure that the checked bags will come in underweight. Worst case scenario we will obviously have to deal with it at the airport but for now we feel reasonably confident.

We grabbed the shuttle to the airport, with a very nice and chatty driver who is interested in our trip in our observations. Very pleasant. Then it's lineups and waiting to get the big bags checked, which we have a little bit of difficulty with as the Air France lady says the weight is fine but the length is too long. We point out to her that in over 20 years of travelling with these exact type of duffle bags, we have always been fine. And besides, we flew to Europe on Air France no less, without any problems whatsoever! Anyway, after some re-jigging of the duffle and some tightening of straps we get them accepted without the €250 per bag overcharge for oversize!!!! Now that would've been utterly unacceptable!

Finally we are installed at our gate and we get some snacks and make some chitchat until we're ready for a final thoughts segment. We make a short video that impossibly tries to sum up how we are feeling about everything we have just gone through. The enormity of the whole endeavour is just too much I think. In hindsight I should have thought a little more about what I might say in such a wrap up as it was obvious we would need to do one. Ah well. 

Given the scale of what we set out to do, without really knowing that that's what we were setting out to do at the outset, and with all the twists and turns it took along the way from way back in June 2020 to this day in August 2023, I think we've done a damn fine job and it has been one hell of an adventure. 

Truly deserving of the word 'epic' I think!

The GTS Chronicles

Luke and Andrew's Epic Adventure

Has a nice ring to it (pun intended).

Well, thanks for reading along; hope you enjoyed this little recounting of what was, for me, a grand adventure of driving and memory-making that will stick with me forever. Many, many thanks to everyone who supported us along the way, and especially to my partner-in-crime, Andrew, without whom I would never have had this experience, nor would I be driving my amazing machine today.

Here's to making more memories with 'Red in the years to come!

~ Luke

p.s. You can read the full, no-holds-barred accounting of this day at gtschronicles.com.