Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Laundry


(PICTURE: See anything strange in this picture?)

I'm usually quite a good packer but on this trip I made a big mistake -- I didn't pack enough undies or socks. The other day, I decided to use one of the skills I've learned in Vietnam -- hand washing clothes. I took a pair of boxers and two of my favorite socks and scrubbed and washed them in my hotel sink. After ringing out the now-wonderfully smelling clothes, I hung them on our hotel balcony to dry. The clothes were still damp later in the day so I decided to keep them outside over night. It was a bad move.

Cape Town apparently has hurricane-like winds. When I awoke in the morning, I could hear the wind swirling outside. I got out of bed and went to the porch and discovered that my undies and one sock were gone. This didn't really make sense because the balcony was surrounded by a three foot high wall of glass. Using my best detective skills, I looked over the balcony's edge and saw my boxers sunk at the bottom of a small algae pool on top of a covered electrical unit:


(PICTURE: One of my favorite boxers.)

I decided to give up on the boxers but wanted to rescue my lone lost sock. Dave and I went to the ground floor and looked everywhere for the sock. Alas, we came up empty handed. The sock blew away to, I can only assume, Antarctica.