Packing For The Olympics Should Be An Olympic Sport

My Vancouver trip is off to a rousing start. After locking myself out of the house at 6:15 this morning, I arrived at the airport and found that my luggage was five pounds overweight. The good news is that now I'm the proud owner of a new carry-on bag. Sure beats paying $150 in extra charges.

Packing for a three-week trip to the Olympics is a little more challenging than a week's vacation in Cancun. While I've already mastered the art of wearing my socks and underwear inside out and backwards to extend their shelf life, all those sweaters, fleeces and sweatshirts take up a lot of room. Not to mention all the snacks I've packed. Do they sell microwavable popcorn north of the border?

The last thing you want to deal with when you're racing off to catch the women's team morning practice is a hotel laundry room. Still, three weeks is a long time, and the last thing you want to do is to smell like the inside of a locker room.

I guess I could have crammed more clothes into a bigger carry-on bag and try to cram it into the overhead like all the other bozos who bring steamer trunks onto the plane and get upset when they won't fit in the overhead.

Turns out all my packing of those extra clothes was all for naught. It's close to 50 degrees up here, and no snow in sight.

I should have just packed like I do for Cancun.