Sean had to get up and go to work today. Not a lot of fun after all that traveling. Of course my day wasn’t any better even though I had the day off. It was raining and I had to go get the mail from the post office. Then I was trying to find out where our bags were and when they finally delivered them, the guy said that the rules wouldn’t let him bring one of my bags onto the porch (too heavy, he said) so it was just sitting there in the rain so I went down and brought it in the house myself. With one hand. It wasn’t that heavy, it just is big. Oh well. Then I had to take the photos to be developed and I accidentally grabbed the wrong keys and locked myself out so I had to get a porch chair and climb over our privacy fence in the rain to get in and then I’d missed the deadline to get our photos in that day’s delivery. Then I get back and King had taken a dump in the living room and Koshi had eaten one of my brand-new Dansko shoes that I’d gotten right before the trip and worn the whole trip because they are the best shoes and really comfortable (and expensive and you can’t get them in Fort Wayne, I’d gotten them in Washington DC when I was there).

At lunch, Sean had checked the hot tub because Erica said it had lost all the water in it and found the leak (a gasket that they had come out to fix before and hadn’t tightened enough I guess) and fixed it. So when he got home from work, he checked it again and the water was not heating up, even though the pumps were running and the "heat" was supposedly working. So we have to call the hot tub people yet again to have them come out and fix it. We’ve seen the hot tub repair people more in the last year than we have actually used the hot tub. What a hassle.

So I go to unpack our suitcases and I see that the Samsonite hardshell suitcase has a huge dent in the corner. They must have dropped it from the side of the plane to damage it that bad. So I get on the phone again and call baggage claims (and wait on hold for about 20 min.) and they say we have to bring the bag to the airport. I ask them if someone is there and they say ‘yes, until 10’ and I ask for the number there to confirm it and they won’t give me the number, they said all calls have to go thru them. Now I know that the ticket counter is not always staffed even though the hours say it will be (I’ve known people to drive from out of town to the counter to pick up tickets and stuff and find the counter closed) so I’m not thrilled with this but figure someone will be there since there should be a flight coming in at 9:15pm (since ours did the night before). We get there and there is someone at the counter, but the manager, who is who we need to speak to, is not there. So we haul the bag in, the woman gives us a form and writes that she’s seen the bag, I check to make sure the contents weren’t damaged (they told me on the phone to bring it in as is, unopened. The woman at the counter said we had to bring it in empty) and we haul it back home. The woman at the desk says the manager won’t be back until Monday and that it takes 6-8 weeks to get the bags back because they send them off somewhere to be inspected and replaced or repaired. They’d better not just hammer out the dent and call our bag repaired! It might look somewhat fixed, but it has definitely destroyed the structural integrity of the suitcase and it’s too expensive a suitcase to "make do".

So I check the other bags for damage of the contents and when I go to open the big suitcase, I find that the lock has been removed from it and the customs sticker over the zipper is off. Obviously someone broke into my bag. Fortunately I just had a bunch of everyday clothes in it and didn’t find anything missing that I could tell. But the zipper pulls were both broken and the lock was gone. So we have another bag to take back to the airport on Monday.

Weekend:

I write an email to our travel agent telling her what all happened and asking if there is any way to get the payment thru CSA (travel insurance) rather than the airline. She said she’d call CSA first thing Monday morning and find out but in the meantime, needed me to get a replacement price for both bags. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard for 2 brand name pieces of luggage (Samsonite and American Tourister), would you? Well, I looked all over the internet and found one Samsonite bag that sort of resembled mine and another one that sounded like it. I couldn’t find any that were the same as my American Tourister (which I just bought last year). So we head out to where I bought the American Tourister (they also have Samsonite) and neither bag was there. They had the smaller version of the American Tourister bag, and a different but similar version of the Samsonite, but that was it. Arggg! Well, I figured that was good enough.

Monday:

We haul the bags back to the airport and the manager has left for the day and won’t be back until Friday to take care of our bags. They do fill out the reports on each bag for us and we leave the bags there and they say that the manager will look at them on Friday and call us about what they plan to do. I am afraid they will lose the bags or something whacky, but what can you do? Guess I’ll find out Friday what they plan to do next. It turns out that CSA won’t cover them until the airlines do their thing first and then only if they deny our claim or (hopefully) if they do not adequately fix the problem (like if they say they are going to just repair the hardshell instead of replacing it). Oh, by the way, whenever you buy a new suitcase be sure to keep the receipt and put it somewhere special so you can find it again, even if it has been awhile. Especially if you have travel insurance (and I would recommend it for any trip that is overseas or expensive), you will need it if you have problems with your bags (and we always do). I, of course, filed them somewhere and cannot find them. Hopefully I won’t need them. But I’d feel a lot better if I had them and will put them in a special place when I buy new luggage from now on.

Vacations are such fun, but the traveling is the worst! That’s why I like cruises, at least once you get on the ship you can get settled and not have to pack up and move, even though you still get to go to lots of interesting places. And I haven’t had a regular, no-problem flight in as long as I can remember and I’ve traveled a fair share. It’s always something!

Well, I guess getting back to the grind (and dealing with the residue from traveling) is what makes vacationing and getting away so much fun.

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