Chris G's Moving Story

On my last post I mentioned our Morgantown friend Chris G, and his "general category" moving story. His story didn't refer to moving children to a new place, or even how he was traumatized as a youngster by a big move. His story was more about the mechanics (and more specifically, packing) of moving.

His story takes place in 2004, not long after Chris and his wife moved to Morgantown. They moved there not long after we did, and we always enjoyed being around them. They have all kinds of interesting stories of travel and adventure, and Chris also did interesting things such as Civil War reenactments, etc. They are also some of the greenest people that I know, and have recently worked on renovating an old house in a very Eco-friendly style.

But I'm off track here. Not long after they moved, Chris took a flight to New York City for a business trip. Unfortunately, while he was there, he threw his back out and then found himself lying on his hotel bed for quite some time until he could get himself back to Morgantown. While lying on the bed, he happened to glance over at his duffel bag, and noticed that one of the pockets looked kind of bulky. He figured that this was something left over from the recent move, as they had used their duffel bags to pack various and sundry items in. He figured that it was something that had escaped the unpacking, so pulled himself over (inch by inch, as he tells it) to the duffel to explore the mystery item.

Lo and behold, it was a leftover moving item - it was five pounds of gunpowder that was intended to be used for one of his Civil War reenactments. The very same five pounds of gunpowder that he had walked through airport security with just the day before.

Now he had a real enigma on his hands. He knew he obviously couldn't take the gunpowder back to the airport again, so he had to get rid of it. His first thought was to pour it down the toilet, but of course didn't want the gunpowder residue on his in case he went through one of those security machines that checks for those kinds of things. (You know, the kind where they put you in this shower-sized compartment and blow air on you to see if any explosive particles fly around in the blowing.)

His second thought was to find a dumpster in a back alley. However, once he painfully hobbled outside his hotel there in Madison Square Garden and dropped his contraband in one, he remembered the 2004 National Republican Convention being held just across the street (with that year's platform being A Safer World and a More Hopeful America), and that made him rethink that decision.

Here's where the story gets a little fuzzy for me in the details, but I know the ending had to do something with him crawling into the dumpster to retrieve the gunpowder, and then finding some place far, far away to get rid of it.

The moral of this story? Well, to check all of your moving vessels before you take them on airplanes.

Or perhaps to not buy gunpowder - ever.