The Luggage Lament: You take the high road, I'll take the low...

Steve's Journey in Red, his bag in Black

LUCY BURDETTE:  As you may have seen on Wednesday's blog, our good friend Steve accompanied us on the trip to Ireland and Scotland. He traveled on Aer Lingus from Miami and met us in Dublin.  After our visit there, he took a short hop to Edinburg, also on Aer Lingus. He was told when checking in that he could not carry on his bag, even though it was carry-on size. Unfortunately, he arrived in Edinburgh, but his luggage did not.  

He called the Aer Lingus help desk and after a long period on hold, was connected with an agent with a heavy Indian accent named Nathan. The suitcase had been sent to London. 

Steve was informed that the bag would be delivered by morning to our hotel in Peebles. It was not. 

Back on the phone with the help desk, this time he spoke with a man named Ethan, who also had a heavy a Indian accent. They assured him the luggage would meet us in our next stop. It did not. 





At this point, he was desperate enough to acquire temporary clothing. He found colorful bamboo socks at our first stop after Edinburgh, underwear which he declined to have photographed in the Straitraer grocery store, a raincoat in Peebles, a sweater in Moffat,—these were necessary purchases as our first week the weather was cold and rainy. 

Since we were taking a ferry to Northern Ireland for the next leg of the journey, the bag was promised at our stop in the Highlands. It did not come. He found t-shirts in Oban.

Fortunately, he found a pair of rinse-able travel pants at the green welly store, as our next stop might have been this clothing dumpster.  




By now Steve had spent hours on the phone talking to Nathan, Ethan, Norman, and Harvey.

Finally, the bag was retrieved and delivered by a good friend of our tour leader...eight days after it went missing.

And now Steve has lessons and tips for all of us travelers:

1.  Don’t listen to the agent at the counter who says you can’t check your carry-on. You can gate check it and collect it at the bottom of the stairs.

2.  You can get by with a lot less than you think.

3. Don't panic. They sell clothes almost everywhere.

4. Pharmaceuticals, electronics, and toiletries should be glued to your side--never checked.

5. Be persistent. Take notes.

And I would add--a positive attitude makes a big difference. Steve was a real sport! As the Scots would say, Dinna fash yersel. (Don’t upset yourself.) 

Any tips to add from your travel stories?

How Not to Travel to India (or anywhere, really)

LUCY BURDETTE: It's Friday the 13th--a perfect day to tell you about my recent travel disaster... 

But first, I can so clearly remember my grandparents disappearing into our guest room one afternoon during a visit in the early 1980’s. When they finally emerged, it turned out they’d been worrying in advance about the trip home, looking for their keys. They searched and searched, more frantic by the moment. My little grandmother finally found them— pinned to the inside of their suitcase where she’d put them before they left home. I knew that would never be me. 

Fast forward thirty-some years…

Rickshaw ride in Old Delhi

After touring two days in Delhi, the time came to pack up and join our group in the hotel lobby in order to catch the plane to Udaipur. You can imagine my despair when I found my passport missing. John ran downstairs to fetch the group leader and a hotel employee and they rooted through every item in our room, including my cotton unmentionables. The passport was gone. And soon after, so was our group. We were left to twiddle our thumbs for four hours until a driver and translator could be dispatched to help get my documents replaced. (No one drives their own car in Dehli – the traffic is heinous and you must be fearless in cutting off other cars, bicycles, rickshaws, ever present tuktuks, and the occasional cow or water buffalo.)

First stop, the Delhi Police Department. Outside the building, a long discussion ensued between our driver and guide, with consultations with other people by phone--in Hindi so we couldn’t understand a word. It boiled down to this: Tell the police you were walking around the hotel and then when you looked, your passport was missing. Do not mention the rickshaw ride in old Delhi (where I suspect I lost it) because then they will send us to that police station to make the report. Okay, my passport is gone and now I'm fibbing to the authorities.

Lucy with her saviors

The interior of the station reminded me a little of places I’d seen in the Caribbean. There were fierce, unsmiling, uniformed men in berets, carrying rifles. There was a woman in a sari who was seated at a desk providing “women’s services." The back of the office opened out to a dusty courtyard where a set of black metal seats welded together were placed facing the sun, along with what looked like a beach umbrella stand covered with a ratty towel. And behind that was a row of scooters. A dirty black and white dog wandered the courtyard, pausing to lift his leg on one of the bikes. Eventually we emerged with a police report. “I think we should look at this as an adventure,” I told John. “One day it will make a good blog.” 

Here’s the photo taken at the moment we left the station with our copies of police report in hand. All still cheerful, in other words.  “Just think,” I added, “if I hadn’t lost my passport, we never would have seen that police officer scratch his nose with the tip of his assault rifle.”

Next we visited the American embassy. It was around 3:30 when we called from the old-fashioned phone stationed at a table on the sidewalk. I was told that the cashier had gone home at noon and there was no way to get help until the next morning. At this moment, our good cheer begin to ebb. 

As we trudged toward our car, the sidewalk phone rang again and the guard waved me over. “Do you have exact change?” “Yes!” “Do you have passport photos?” I explained we had just stopped to get them taken. “Without spectacles?” the woman asked. Of course that’s not what we had. 

“If you can get pictures retaken and return by four we will try to help you.” 

So off we went to our second photography studio, this one stationed inside a tiny dry cleaning establishment. Two men banged on the back metal door, and the photographer came out and hung a white cloth over the front window. And then took the worst photo of me I have ever had taken in my life. I considered posting it here for you but could not bear to do it. An hour later, I emerged from the embassy with temporary passport. Still, we were short one document, the exit visa.

We arrived at the visa office the next morning, and were advised by a lovely Australian man to visit the "office" on a nearby street where my documents could be uploaded and added to my application. (You might have had such equipment in your office in the 1990's. I was taking this picture from the sidewalk.)

Then we returned to the visa office and waited, hearing nightmare stories of people who’d been waiting 10 days to three weeks—returning each day to try to resolve another mysterious technical issue. (Luckily, I had Rhys’s new book on my phone or I might have gone mad.) The workers buzzed around, seeming to accomplish little as people poured in but none went out. We heard rumors that the office closed down for lunch and I began to get seriously worried. Finally we were called in and given my papers, and then rushed off to catch a plane and join our group.

The next morning as we woke up exhausted. John said: "I’ve been thinking about document discipline. We are going to have one zippered pocket for our documents, no lip balm, no hand sanitizer, no iPhones allowed in that pocket." 

"Document discipline? I’m all in," I said. "How about we pin them to the inside of the suitcase?"

Please come back tomorrow and I'll share a little of what was actually on our tour of India, rather than Lucy's private tour of Indian bureaucracy...meanwhile would you care to share one of your traveling disaster stories?? 

And PS here's John's take on the "incident" with practical suggestions about how to stay organized when traveling...

**Tealady Kathryn is the winner of Edith Maxwell's book, TURNING THE TIDE. Contact edith at edithmaxwell dot com  to arrange for the drop!

Take the Jungle Red Seatmate Quiz!

Hank over Chicago without Steven Spielberg

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yeah well, traveling.  It can be wonderful, it really can. A fun window seat over a cool recognizable city like Chicago. Sitting by, say, Steven Spielberg. I mean, it could happen. It didn't, though. Yet. 
Oh, now, this isn’t what I was going to write, but hmm. Who would I love to sit by, more than anyone?  Not counting any of you, of course,  because that might really happen. But what if you got on the plane, sat in the widow seat, got organized and say (because this is a fun thing), you looked really great. And as you settle in,  you hear a little rustle. And you look up. And about to take the empty seat beside you is—WHO?

While you contemplate, say hi to our Jungle Red stalwart pal, the fab David Burnsworth! He travels. A lot.  And he can take the seatmate quiz, too. Right after he gets his luggage back.

DAVID BURNWORTH:  I travel for both my day job and my writing. And, as I’m sure with most of you who travel, I have some stories. Some of them good. Some of them not so good. I happen to be on a trip to South America as I write this, so the challenge of travel is fresh on my mind.

My first trip outside of North America, I was to meet a friend in Customs in the Brussels Airport. My departure was from Knoxville and he was flying standby from Atlanta. A problem for him, and soon for me, was this was the same time that the World Cup was being played. In France. And he was flying standby. See the problem here? So, my first time out of the country I had no idea what I was doing. As the first hour and then the second ticked by while sitting in the airport in another country waiting and he didn’t show up, I started to wonder that there might be something wrong. And there was. He was still in Atlanta. I had to figure out the phone system and make a few calls back to the states. Long story short, it was my first trial in travel and I had to figure it out on my own.

David's actual finicky toiletries

Fast forward twenty years to my current travel challenge. I thought I had everything covered: a four-hour layover in ATL before the long flight, a spare set of underwear in my carry on. Only, and this isn’t the first time I’ve experienced this, Atlanta shuts down all ground activity because of lighting and heavy rain. Apparently they value the ground crews’ lives. (Kudos to you, ATL!) So, my fifty-minute flight from GSP (Greenville Spartanburg) took four hours thanks to a few loops over Atlanta and a two-hour stopover in Chattanooga for more fuel. Lucky for me, I walked off that flight, stopped for a quick restroom break, and walked right on my flight to Chile.

The challenge this time was while I made it, my bag didn’t. Turns out I can buy most of my finicky toiletry choices (ed. note: see above) in Santiago which is great. But transferring clothing sizes from US English measurements to metric isn’t so easy. My waist didn’t really just add fourteen units of measurement? Was it that extra pastry on the flight?

I love to travel. But I find that it requires patience and a willingness to be flexible.

My best experience? There’s two: Five years ago, my wife and I got a free upgrade to a suite in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The downside? She likes suites now.

The second great experience? Stuttgart to Atlanta, I got a first class upgrade.

The latest book in my Brack Pelton series, Big City Heat, Brack travels from Charleston to Atlanta to help a friend find a missing woman. He also faces some challenges, some of them a little bit more involved than missing luggage.

Do you like to travel? If so, what are some of your stories?

HANK: Or hey, Reds and readers—tell me your answer to the seatmate quiz! Only one choice.  I’d pick—Stephen King!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

David Burnsworth became fascinated with the Deep South at a young age. After a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tennessee and fifteen years in the corporate world, he made the decision to write a novel. Big City Heat (April 2017, Henery Press) is the third title in his Brack Pelton series. In It For The Money (September 2017, Henery Press) continues the story of Private Eye Blu Carraway from the cross-over novella, Blu Heat (March 2017, Henery Press). Having lived in Charleston on Sullivan’s Island for five years, the setting was a foregone conclusion. He and his wife call South Carolina home.

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