The logistical challenges around moving from here to there include:

• Anything that I ship in the container, I won’t see again until I have a more-long-term apartment. That could be six months or more.
• To successfully negotiate the Aptos > SFO > Paris CDG > Montpellier voyage without having a heart attack, I need to:
  1. Pack one bag efficiently, with no more than 50 pounds of stuff, but with everything I will need immediately.
  2. Pack one carry-on bag (my trusty L.L. Bean messenger bag) with iPad, documents, chargers, and so on.
  3. Pack one cat.
• Anything I will need between arrival in MPL and seeing my shipped stuff months later must be shipped, somehow, to my apartment.

Yeh, that last one is a challenge. I figure packing one additional suitcase with clothes and a carry-on size bag with books and miscellany (no more than 50 pounds each!) will keep me going. Oh, but my technological needs, there’s the rub!

I researched online, and found several companies who will ship your luggage to you, for about $250 for a standard 50# bag. Check the UPS site, I found suggestions that the same bag, stuffed in a box, could be delivered for about the same, $250. So I visited the local UPS Store to see if they could verify that information. . . um, no, not really. More like $900. Each 50# box. Ouch. The nice lady suggested I come back with more precise dimensions of my needs, and also to try the US Postal Service. Yes, really.

At the Aptos Post Office, I learned that one 50# bag, boxed or not, sent Priority Express International, would run about $179 and take a week. No kidding. That’ll work.

One more detail, though. . . technology. I don’t seriously believe I can make do with an iPad only for months. Not if I need access to past tax returns and other documents, email that’s not on Gmail, and so on. In light of the prospective cost to have UPS pack and ship my iMac and the attendant peripherals, including multiple external drives, I’m thinking shipping the storage units and not the actual iMac might make sense. This machine is 5+ years old. The cost to ship it could be ~half the cost to just buy a new one when I’m there. If I carry a portable 1TB drive with me, I can have most of what I need on a new machine, and then pick up the backups as needed.