Dubious Quality

In this case, his golf clubs. A friend of his worked for a year at St. Andrew's and was told he could come and play anytime (and bring a friend).

Of course, Eli wanted to get his game in shape before he goes, and it's summer. For once, he's taking a break from working. Of course, he's playing tennis, running, climbing, and cycling in the meantime (I'm sure I forgot something), so why not play golf, too?

It all sounded so simple on paper. 

I left at 2:30 yesterday to go to the storage unit to pick up his clubs. He'd paid for 56.5 pounds for the shipment (which he'd arranged to have picked up, in a thoughtful move). The bag plus clubs, though, only weighed 35. 

I should have seen this coming.

He selected basically all the remaining sporting gear in the storage unit and had me pack it into the softshell golf bag case, along with the clubs. 

New weight: 61.5 pounds.

The storage unit air conditioning was not designed to handle 97F outside temperatures. Usually, it's pleasantly cool inside the unit, but I was sweating buckets this time. The bag was so heavy I could barely wheel it out to the car, let alone get it into the car. 

Then, when I got back home, muscling it out of the car and up to the condo. Phew.

But I wasn't done. Remember that five extra pounds? Something had to go, and I had a sneaking suspicion it was going to be his golf bag, because it was already on its last legs. We talked and he was thinking the same thing. 

So I had to unload a golf travel case packed as full as Porky Pig's trunk and repack it--this time, without the golf bag inside. 

That got us under the weight limit. However, this brought up a new issue: how to protect the clubs and not have them rattle around? This meant I had to bubble wrap all of the club heads, put the shafts together, bubble wrap them, and arrange everything else around them so nothing would be rattling inside. 

I'm out of gas at this point. Way out of gas. It's 7, and I've been working on this for 4.5 hours straight.

I won't bore you (I probably already have) with the label and customs forms details. Just know that it was eventually completed and I dropped into bed like a bag of cement. 

And that's how I sent a sporting goods warehouse to England.