A Lightening of the Load

How One Must Prepare for Transport

I'm anticipating a move, a road trip from Blessington to elsewhere in the coming month. Like most prisoners, I will be expected to carry all my own stuff, and that means books, paperwork, unopened commissary items must all be carried by hand in my laundry bag(s). I'm physically about as far away from the transport room as I can get, so it's a long-ish haul across the compound.

As so, I spent the morning rummaging through my effects, figuring out what I can and cannot dispense of at this time. Books, as precious as they really are to me, are low on the totem pole for transport as they amount to a lot of weight to haul; since I have to also carry legal paperwork, I need to preserve room and carrying capacity for that as well. I ended up giving several books as gifts to people in the dorm and putting some on our dorm's "free table", which lightened my potential load.

I'll have to hope I have enough time and energy for another run through the locker so I can figure out the state of my legal paperwork, namely what must absolutely go with me and what must be shredded to bits for disposal. I think I have several duplicate copies provided over the course of filing my papers that are either redundant or dated and can be safely disconnected from my transport needs. In fact, I hope that's what the stack I'm thinking about is -- that can pare off a few pounds of weight and open up several cubic inches of space I didn't have, just like the books did.

I have quite little in the way of unopened canteen items to take with me -- just one bag of creamer, a bar of soap, and some packets of sweetener; this feels like a testament to running a lean operation overall, as I try not to oversupply myself.

If I have a couple of weeks, then excellent -- I should be able to tackle that stack issue, reduce things down further! When I'm about certain it's time, I'll find someone to bless with my little dictionary -- they are hard to come by in prison if you don't have people buying one for you from the outside.

When You Don't Prepare

I've seen people who aren't prepared for a move across the compound, much less across the state on PiSSBUS, our affectionately named (/s) prison bus system, powered by modified BlueBird buses. A person was recently moved across the compound to a less structured dorm, and had scads of things to move. Laundry bags full of clothing, belongings, canteen, plus his bedroll (which includes the mattress). He was not allowed to use a cart for the move, and had to carry it by hand. It took three people to move him total.

Worse still is if you go to a new compound, staff there are usually not accommodating for any physical weakness or disability unless it's clear and visible; therefore, if you cannot carry your own stuff, you lose it was the general practice.

I don't want it to be more than myself and maybe one person to help with the heavy, flat mat that I sleep on here at Blessington, so I decided to Marie Kondo my way through my locker until the pain said Stop. :)

I hit my stop point, but it's a productive one today.