Ever stood by a baggage carousel, waiting for your second of two bags, and noticed no one else is left at the carousel? I hadn’t before tonight.

Yes, for the first time in over a decade of travel, I was left at the baggage carousel with a bag in one hand and my dick in the other.

In all honesty, it’s not so bad. Especially since this is the first time it’s happened to me, and it happened on the return trip, and everything else about the travel went well – full planes both ways, in coach, but I had normal people around [which makes it tolerable].

They misplaced the smaller of my two bags, which means that I have all of my chargers and the majority of my clothing. What I don’t have is the power adapter for my Wii and a few other “nice to have” things. Like my razor… guess I’m “roughing” it with an old Fusion for a day or two.

Also, it was a baggage service dude that approached me first; he noticed that I was waiting for a bag that simply wasn’t coming. He was proactive about it, and got me all of the information he needed for tracking. Where is the bag? We still don’t know. I think that someone grabbed the wrong bag by mistake, which means that I’ll need to wait for someone to return it first… the guys at American Airlines think that it accidentally went to San Diego. Neat trick for a non-stop flight.

Which brings me to JFK. If they don’t have a labor issue or a strike going on, they are truly fucked over there. It took’m 50 minutes to unload the luggage from my SEA to JFK flight. Tonight, it took’m over 50 minutes to get the arriving luggage unloaded and our luggage loaded. Well, almost all the luggage loaded. Having said that, the boys are SEA had the luggage on the carousel before I could get from the plane to the claim area… so it’s not AA. It’s not the 757. It’s gotta be JFK. Who, incidentally, may be to blame for sending my second bag to CA without me. On top of that, the drive to JFK itself was… harrowing, for lack of a better word. Maybe it’s just me but I’d like to see the following on an Interstate:

– Roads that have more than 3 inches on each side of the car, per lane

– Bridges that are neither temporary nor made from parts that look like they came out of an Erector set

– Lanes that have lines, rather than just a non-discript three lane road

No joke. The southbound Van Wyck is that screwed. One part of the road looked like Kramer’s dream highway – no lane lines at all – and another part of it left me white knuckled as I tried to thread a needle-wide road with a thimble-sized SUV.

On the home front, I can’t tell if my fish survived the lack of attention this go around. I left him with a multi-day food tab thingy, but I have to say that he didn’t look at all happy when I saw him today… he’s still alive, but I’d use the term “barely”. I dropped in another tablet and some real food – it should help, but time’ll tell.

Anyway, AA tells me that they will deliver my luggage to my house tomorrow – the only downside to that is that I think they got the address wrong – I corrected it before I left, but I don’t know that it made it into the system… I get to call them tomorrow and track their progress, though. Good thing too: I have to restock my refrigerator with condiments – since I didn’t get a chance to post-Wind Storm/pre-Vacation – and I’ll be needing some coffee.

Should make for a fun Sunday.