A guy goes to an airline counter and checks in for his flight. He asks if one of his bags can be sent to Melbourne and the other one to Perth. Definitely not, is the answer. “Why not,” he asks – “you did that for me last week”.
Okay, so maybe it’s a joke, but it was not much of a laughing matter for me recently when I flew to Sydney and my luggage didn’t follow.
While at dinner awaiting a call from the airline to see if they had located it, our waitress accidentally tipped an entire cabbage salad over me – soiling my only outfit.
When I travel internationally, I always keep a change of outfit in my carry on – I’d just never thought I would need to on a short haul.
I got off very lightly with this lesson. Thankfully, I was attending a training course the next day and not performing a keynote address for a corporate group (which is often the case) which meant I could scrape through if my bag didn’t show up.
Luckily my luggage joined me before the night was out, so I was able to don fresh clothes for my course.
At any other time I might have got really annoyed, but this month I’m running Grateful in April and I figure there is no point in wasting energy on a situation I can’t change. They are more important issues to focus on – such as social justice – that put issues like this into perspective.
That said, I’m throwing a fresh set of clothes in my carry-on luggage to any destination – just in case.