Levels

There is an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer talks about redoing his apartment with "levels."  As I started putting stuff in the xB, I quickly realized how small it actually is.  While it doesn't look like it, the distance from the front seats to the back hatch is only about four feet.  The reason you don't realize this is because you can easily put 8 foot long lumber in the xB with room to spare.  With some effort, you can get something almost 10 feet long inside.  So when I realized the space behind the seats was only four feet long, I was surprised.  We had a lot of stuff we wanted to put in there because we were now thinking seriously about taking a two month trip to Alaska.  The solution turned out to be levels.  By just putting in one platform, we were able to turn four feet into eight feet.  Eventually, we added some other levels as well making it much easier to organize all the stuff we would be taking.  Things were pretty good for the test trip to Yellowstone but, as expected, we learned a lot about what worked and what didn't.  As I am writing this, we are hoping that all of those changes will make the whole thing work much better for the longer trip to Alaska.  We are not done yet but, so far, things are looking pretty good.