03.02.14 - 9:00 am

when people ask, "what was it like to move cross country?" they dont really care for the answer. a simple "oh it was an adventure all right" will suffice. and while this answer is true, the details weave a slightly more tumultuous journey.

we missed our flight to florida, for starters. by 120 seconds.

it had started as a perfect day. julie and ash would wake up in camas, washington, with julies aunt and uncle. they would make the short trip to the airport and meet me there. meanwhile i slept at my moms house, so that at 9 am we could begin our day of packaging animals. if everything went as planned, i would be on the road by 1130, at the airport by 12 and in the air by 130pm. i would have to work fast.

we arrived at upscales a good half hour before they opened, but travis was already working and let me in early. this bought me a few more critical minutes. the day prior i had shopped at the container store and purchased a 30 gallon plastic tub, lined the lip with a foam strip to make it air tight when sealed and brought along some large, heavy duty plastic sacks to further ensure a water tight package. i had a number of animals i was bringing along with me to florida: unique coral pieces, hard to find fish and remarkable anemones. i bagged them all with pure oxygen and as little water as necessary for their 24 hour journey. by the end of all this my fingers refused to bend all the way, stiff from the same repetitive movements and submerged exhaustion. the first attempt at placing the bags of marine life into a styrofoam shipping box and placing that inside the plastic tote would mean i would have to abandon several animals due to space limitations. so the decision was made to forego the styrofoam box and depend on the strength of solely the plastic. the trade off for more space was a substantial drop in insulation ability. in an unheated cargo hold of a plane for six hours, its going to get very cold at 36000 feet. these animals would need a minimum of 70 degrees if they were to survive this.

as if it were meant to be, on my way to my moms at 1130pm the night before, unsure how i was going to get heatpacks for the following morning and still have time for everything else and worried i would just have to roll the dice without them, a neighborhood walmart appeared. a 24 hour neighborhood walmart. and yes, they had 10 hour heat packs. lots of them. for cheap.

oxygenated. hastily bagged. double wrapped. packed. heated. sealed. with my mom hovering nearby, announcing my rapidly dwindling window of time, i finished and loaded the car. she would drop off the small shoe box sized package groaning in the backseat later that morning. these were my tortoises. individually sealed in a $3.99 pillow cases, and crammed together in a styrofoam lined box with air holes, these two guys would have the roughest time of any of us getting to florida. they would be going through the mail system. pressed together. unable to move. through conveyor belts, tossed onto trucks, thrown into the back of planes, kicked into a delivery vehicle, bumping down roads and finally deposited in west palm beach florida to the firm grip of one john helgesson. i prayed their heat packs worked.