I woke early and started sorting. There was so much stuff! We also had various admin to see to – most
importantly packaging our shot glass collection, followed by ringing Virgin to
persuade them that they owed us a free bag for forcing us to shorten our trip
by one day. Apparently, it worked! We must
pay for our third bag up front but they state they will refund it. In addition, I found that there was an online
form to cancel our vehicle registration with the RMV. This would save us having to return to the
RMV in Lowell – one of the most painful experiences and my least favourite
place in the whole of America! Sadly, there was over a one hour wait to speak
to someone over the phone and we just wouldn’t have the time. We would have to face up to a re-visit to the
RMV….
Si had discovered a Guitar centre in Nashua that would buy
his acoustic. Decision made, we could do
a round trip to Nashua to sell his guitar, send our shot glasses from the post
office and attend the RMV on the return leg.
Things didn’t go our way at all really.
Starting with the guitar centre saying their best price for Si’s beloved
Fender was only $30 (ouch) which made us wish we’d given it away to charity
rather than giving them the opportunity to make money from it. Then the post office. Despite saying we were in no rush whatsoever
for our package (they could put it on a slow boat via China if they liked), the
slowest, cheapest option for us was $97.50! (ouch again) What option did we
have? There was no way we could fit our
collection in our cases so we had to pay.
Shockingly, our visit to Lowell RMV was the smoothest part of the trip! It was not at all painful this time, taking
just two minutes to cancel our registration and leave them one of the plates from
the RV. They never even asked where the
second plate was which, naturally we had left at the house as we had no
intention of returning the one part of our RV we were determined to keep.
We wanted to keep to our side of the bargain and secure
dinner for everyone tonight so stopped off at a supermarket to buy pizzas and
garlic bread and fill up with gas. This
meant that by the time we got back to the house it was just before 4pm and NO
bags were packed yet! Yes, I was getting
mighty stressed! But, according to cool, calm and collected Simon, two hours
was plenty of time to pack three huge suitcases….. Whilst he was distracted, I rapidly cut down
our ‘keepers’ box full of leaflets, receipts and mementos that I question
whether we will ever look at again. All
three of the suitcases had to be sat on to be closed, were bulging at the sides
and probably all over weight. But we had
no more time and we would not be sending any more possessions in the mail after
our earlier experience. I didn’t want to
be rude and have no time to spend with the family before we went, so I went
downstairs to have a quick dinner with them, including Michael and Francis who
had just returned from the Cape.
 |
| Boston City appearing on the horizon |
We said our farewells, not knowing where or when we would
meet again, and started our journey to the airport at 6pm. We had no problem getting to Boston Logan
airport for 7pm as hoped, having dropped off the hire car and hopped on a bus
to the terminal. We took some deep
breaths before approaching our bag drop.
As expected, we had to pay for the extra bag as before AND an additional
fee for one of our bags being significantly overweight, but I think that we got
off lightly as they only charged us for the worst offender! Never mind, we need
to learn to travel lighter. But we have been away for 9 months!
A great sense of relief hit us now that we had actually made
it, there was even time for some last-minute gift shopping and a beer to
celebrate/commiserate our departure from the States. It was a smooth process onto the flight and
we even had three seats right at the back between the 2 of us. It is a rare occasion that I manage to sleep
on a flight but I think being exhausted and drained from rushing about all day
helped. I dozed off after dinner and
with the flight being only 5 and a half hours long, before we knew it, it was
the next day and we were landing back in the UK.
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