#8 - Post Script – It’s a Bag, Mr. Walker, It’s a Bag.

I would really be unfair if my life went back to normal after a great trip to the Northeast with Joe. So I knew that when I woke up the next morning and resurrected the familiar cadence of family breakfast, that it wouldn’t be business like usual. Today was different because after getting back from Burlington and Chicago yesterday, on Sunday, I had to return this afternoon to Chicago and then go on to Charleston.

I took Will, Kate and Lizzie down to the beach to ride bikes and experience the strange feeling of being at home along the boardwalk in Santa Monica in a place that millions of people experience as tourists, the same way that I had just returned from three places where I had just acted as a tourist. After rushing home to not miss my flight (which I nearly did), I made it to Chicago and then headed off to my flight to Charleston.

Since the plane to Charleston is pretty small, I had to gate check my bag on the jetway before I boarded the plane. I had done this hundreds of times because I am almost always traveling to remote locations on small planes. When I arrived in Charleston, I looked on the luggage rack for my backpack, and to my great dismay it wasn’t there. I waited some more, and next to me is the pilot on the plane who also seemed to be missing his bag. He knows the baggage crew and they start scouring the cargo holds and the inside of the plane, and nothing shows up.

We proceed to go down to the baggage claim thinking that maybe it was sent there already. Nothing. We file our claim and I proceed to go to the hotel. Oh, I forgot to mention that since I had come from the beach that morning and raced out the door, I was still in shorts and a t-shirt. Charleston, by the way, isn’t 95 with 90% humidity as was forecasted. More like 85 with 100% humidity. I call the next morning. Nothing. Fortunately some nice fellows I work with left me a golf shirt in my room, and so I went to the golf shop to pick up some golf pants that morning for a day’s worth of business meetings, most of which include people I had never met before. Out of golf pants – no one buys them anymore.

Much to the everyone’s amusement, I show up to my breakfast meeting in something less than “resort casual”. Moreover, I am wearing a striped yellow shirt with plaid tan pants, so on top of being overly casual, I’m a fashion faux pas. I keep calling United throughout the day, and still nothing. By the end of the day, I wave off requests to have someone go get me some pants, thinking that the worst of the embarrassed was over, and my bag surely had to show up soon. I even email a photo of the backpack to United. Nothing.

The next morning I went back to the golf shop to buy a new golf shirt and shorts, and as I was looking through the khaki shorts, I noticed two pairs of pants, one of which happened to fit me. While the golf shop was out of belts and I was still wearing running shoes, at least I was presentable this morning.

On my way back to Los Angeles at the Charleston Airport, I decide to have a nice chat with the baggage fellow in Charleston as I walk inside the terminal to figure out if my bag might be in Charleston. I go through security and notice that I have a chance to catch an earlier flight into Chicago. I show up to the gate as some guy is closing the door. He closes the door before I get there, so I go up to the window and bang on it. He comes back to the door and I ask him if I can get on the earlier flight. He tells me “No, there’s no way. I have to go close the door to the airplane.” I respond, “Well that’s good, because that means that you haven’t yet closed the door to the plane.” He says back to me, “Look, there’s just no way” and proceeds to slam the door in my face. So much for Southern hospitality.

It was not all for naught, however, because after I arrived in Chicago I decided to exit security, go down to baggage claim and ask them if my bag was still there. All along I have been suspecting this, and despite my numerous phone calls to United (the guy in Charleston looked up my record and noted that I am a pretty relentlessly persistent guy), no one could tell me where my bag was. As I stood in line, the minutes were ticking away and I started to fear that I would miss my connecting flight to LA (which would cause me to miss the waning moments of my 14th wedding anniversary, which would be the perfect end to bag-gate oh-eight). I finally get up to the front and perhaps the world’s nicest airline customer service person greets me with a warm smile which I desperately needed to keep me from going postal over why no one at O’Hare could find my bag until I did it myself. Anyway, I tell her my story and then show her the digital photo of my backpack that, as luck would have it, I kept from my travel blog earlier that week. I then ask her if I can go back and look at the bags. She says, “No, that won’t be necessary. We only have a few backpacks left. Let me go check.” She then goes behind the metal door, and there I wait, my life in the balance. I kept playing out both scenarios in my mind as I waited impatiently, checking my watch every 15 seconds – bag, no bag, bag, no bag, bag, no bag….

Finally, the door opens and out comes the nice lady with my bag hoisted triumphantly above her head as if to say, “It’s your bag, Mr. Walker, it’s your bag!” [extra bonus points for knowing the correct cultural-literary reference] I said, “I can’t believe it, thank you!” and proceeded to give the woman a great big hug, not caring less if they called the TSA’s on me.

After a nine day stretch in which I visited the cities of Mexico City, Boston, Stowe, Montreal, Chicago #1, LA, Chicago #2, Charleston, Chicago #3 and finally back to LA, it wasn’t a bad way to end a long long week of travel.

That is, until I received an email from United when I got home safe and sound telling me that they still have not found my piece of lost baggage, but they are working hard on it.

I’m looking forward to a good week and a half at home.