LOST LUGGAGE.

By David Horrocks

We have all had the experience of feeling panic or at least trepidation when we have emerged from the inbound flight gates in an airport and stood by the carousels seeking in vain for the bag with the red ribbon or whatever ‘that’s mine’ marker we have attached.

The first time it happened to me was on a flight to New Zealand during the firstever holiday I took with my then-girlfriend, now wife.

Being the experienced ‘ultracool’ traveller, I showed my expertise trying to impress her with the comment that we shouldn’t bother to join the long exit queue but should sit comfortably until the crush had abated then saunter to the pick-up point.

This we did with all going well to find one bag doing the circuit. It looked like our bag, but it wasn’t. We grabbed it anyway. Now, this was a flight that arrived very late, getting in after 11 PM. The place was just about disserted. Mr Cool then got a bit flustered. Realising that the car hire booths must also be about to close, we raced to secure our car and luckily thought to ask for a street map of Christchurch along with the normal road maps (this was a while ago long before the advent of satellite guidance stuff).

Now with the panic in check, we reasoned that the bag we now had likely belonged to the person who had taken our valise. Attached was an owner's tag, luckily with a local address and not one of an overseas resident visiting on holiday. We promptly set off using the Avis street directory and half an hour later knocked on a suburban house door behind which we could hear a noisy celebration in progress. To cut a long story short we ended up joining in the party and with bags exchanged and a couple of glasses of bubbles under our belts set off belatedly to start our holiday.

Many years later we had another ‘lost bag’ experience of a rather different kind. By this time we were both retired and off on many months long aroundthe-world jaunt. We arrived in New York to stay for a couple of weeks. We had treated ourselves to a trans-Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2. Now those readers who are ‘cruisers’ will know that to comply with the rules of formal nights, it is necessary to carry posh gear. Such northern hemisphere sailings are different to the ones leaving from Australia where shorts and the like are the accepted attire. On voyages ‘up north’ it's expected that even casual gear involves jackets and slacks for men and somewhat ‘posher’ ladies clobber and of course, ladies can never wear the same outfit more than once, it's just not done. This is particularly important on such as Cunard line ships.

After New York, we intended to travel by the Adirondak train north into French Canada, then by rental car to Niagara and Toronto and then later across the country on ‘The Canadian’ the four-day long trans-Canada rail service. Now lugging a large suitcase containing the posh clobber along with our other luggage seemed a dumb idea; however, we had the problem that we were going to need said clobber later because we were to return to Australia from Vancouver on a Holland America ship which also featured formal nights and smart casual dress etc.

This is when the Mr Cool's smart thinking got us into trouble again. Why not send the case of clobber on using a DHL courier to be collected in Vancouver? Easy Peasy, yes – er, not as it turned out. The helpful DHL lady in NY helped us fill in the despatch note, we gave her some money and off we went to catch the train.

Things went wrong when we were in Montreal. DHL contacted us to tell us that the case was stuck in Denver, western USA. The problem was that the consignment was an international shipment and should not have been sent by road. The US and Canada are very picky about borders. All new documents would need to be completed. In desperation, we found a DHL office in Montreal where we were presented with the new documentation. This was extensive, to say the least. We had to list each individual item that was in the case. We had to state each place of origin and its individual value, all to satisfy customs. I suggested to the DHL folk that we might just lose the caseabandon it in Denver. Was there a river alongside the depot where the case could accidentally end up? Absolutely not they said we were responsible for the matter, and we would bear all the costs associated.

We had no idea what all the items in the case were, let alone where each was made and what its value was. Faced with some imagined mammoth costs we decided to flunk it. Maybe customs in some depot in Denver wouldn’t go through all the trouble of checking personal items so we filled in the forms in a very imaginative manner. We had with us a lady friend who shall we say was somewhat pedantic in temperament and she also had the ability to write in the tiniest lettering but with great accuracy. How she managed to do so without the use of a magnifying glass amazed me. We figured that the customs guys in Denver might not have the patience needed to decipher her script, so we gave her the task of filling in the many forms. Even to the moment when we checked into our accommodation in Vancouver, we had no idea of what was happening but there it was when we arrived. No extra costs for the transport, no customs duties, just the case delivered. We figured that we had made it all too hard for them, so they just relented and

By Heenam Kim