So, for those of you who are dying to know how I dealt with my suitcase when it was time to fly home at the end of my summer of a lifetime in Sevilla, I will tell you.
Now, the normal, and probably easier, thing to have done would have just been to toss my one-wheeled suitcase and buy a new one, but did I do that?
You bet I didn’t.
First of all, I didn’t want to spend the money on a new suitcase (because what if it got damaged on the flight home?). Second of all, I thought with a little guidance from my dad (who was only one WhatsApp video call away), I could MacGyver the wheel back onto my suitcase. My only goal was for the wheel to hold until I had to pick up my bag at baggage claim.
So, I decided to glue it.
Since I’m no glue expert, I went to the most logical source: my dad, the handyman. After we went back and forth about which kind of glue he thought would be stronger, he gave me his suggestions on what to look for. Then, I went to my host mom and asked if she thought I could find a kind of glue at El Corte Inglés that could reattach and hold the wheel in place (and boy, did we have a laugh when I tried to translate “glue gun” into Spanish).
If you’re looking to get out of your comfort zone, go to Sevilla where almost no one speaks English and try to explain my situation to three employees on three different floors of the store, a seven-floor version of Costco. Immediately after the second employee saw that I was an American asking for help in Spanish, he didn’t bother trying to answer me back in Spanish and pulled up Google Translate on his computer to mutter something incoherent back to me in English.
I didn’t want to put up with an employee who didn’t want to try with me, so I turned to the third employee. After asking me what kind of material my suitcase was made out of, she pointed out the aisle and recommended a brand of hot glue. I thanked her for being so helpful and patient, and then hurried home to test out the glue.
I called my dad back for moral support, and he coached me on gluing it back on. “Once that glue is on the back of the wheel, you only have a few seconds to attach it,” he said. “You have to work quickly.” So, I had my dad telling me to go go go over the phone, my host mom hovering over my shoulder and not understanding a thing he said, and me sitting on the kitchen floor with my suitcase, like the floor was my operating table. I felt like I was putting on my own comedy show.
My incredible hot glue job
Honestly, this is a piece of art
I wheeled it into the Sevilla airport the next morning, and there we had the moment of truth: no runaway wheel! Success!
I for sure thought that the wheel would be gone by the time I saw my suitcase coming off of the conveyer belt at baggage claim . . . but there she was, surviving (and possibly thriving) with both of her wheels!