My SE and I pack our own since I'm a 'hanger' and she's a 'folder' when it comes to packing. I usually default to the garment bag or fo longer trips, the rolling, expanding, inspector gadget garment bag. She used a rollaboad or a large pullman for long trips. For the long trips, we share a bag dedicated to shoes. Now before you go on about women and shoes, we're even in that respect what with my trail boots, dress shoes and Reeboks. (I wear the metal-free, shankless mocs on the plane).

Carry-ons are individual responsibility, however we do pack one change of clothing in each others bag just in case. Luckily, that contingency only came into play once when her bag somehow missed the connection flight. We knew the status but had to make an appt so she at least had some fresh clothes. Good thing as her bag didn't get delivered until 6 hours after we arrived.

We did have one horrendous encounter because of our luggage tags. It was a very long international trip with four of us traveling together in F. We had a total of seven checked bags. Now mind you, five of those bags belong to me and my SE but they all have my name on the tag. Our two friends don't travel much so they just borrowed our bags--we're all going to the same place.

Now up until this time, there's never been any trouble flying. However, we're at the ATC getting our boarding passes to come back to the US and the ticket agent is giving all of us a hard way to go because MY name is on more than two bags and she was going to charge me excess bagagge fees! I pointed out that her fellow ticket agents just lumped ALL of our bags, even the ones in my friend's name, under MY name for the sake of expediency. She was having none of that and made us write out new luggage tags for each of the bags!

[This message has been edited by jonesing (edited 04-14-2003).]