Simultaneous traveling and packing...

Putting all of your travel plans together and purchasing what you need and packing it while discarding other things is quite a task. Doing it while you have no home base and are traveling between states going to conferences and visiting friends is a whole 'nother beast. And that is exactly what I did, leaving my bag full of the necessities as well as a whole slew of random items I realized I didn't have anything to do with along the way.

Here's an overview of my last few weeks
June 13 I graduated from Roosevelt College at UCSD
June 20 I fleew to Kansas City MO to intern at the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference
June 25th I flew home to Colorado to spend some time with my sisters
June 30th I headed back to San Diego to relax and sort out the final details of moving out of my last apartment
July 7th I flew to Spokane Washington to visit my best friend. (explanation of this below)
July 12th I flew to LA and stayed with Julie before flying to London the morning of the 13th.

While I intended to see my friend Aliina before I headed for Europe, what actually happened here was that when I originally booked my plane ticket to London, I realized that flying out of LA was about $250 cheaper than it would be to fly out of San Diego. So, being the non-LA person that I am, I booked the ticket thinking I could catch a cheap commuter flight to LA or ride the train to get there before I flew out. What I didn't realize is that there really is no such thing as a cheap commuter flight to LA (most flights I found costed around $180 and had a layover in Phoenix) and the train station in LA goes nowhere near LAX.

When I was trying to figure out how to get to LA, Aliina and I were brainstorming and we looked into flights from SD to Spokane (a little layover) then to LA and found that that option was cheaper than the train or more "direct" flights and so I booked the ticket.

Now, what I learned from having this crazy schedule is that it makes packing for the final destination immensely hard. I had to have conference attire, clothes to work in the field in Spokane, and all the gadgets I needed for Europe. To say the least I am completely overpacked and have found that I didn't download a majority of my favorite music onto my iPhone, leaving me with much too much country music and non of the correct playlists.

As ever though, I'm sure I'll manage to pull all the right things together to make this trip a success! Be warned though, if you have a big trip, try to relax at home and really plan out your packing before you go!