D’s Luggage Travels to Los Angeles Without Her

I know the first thing you'll do is cry boo-hoo for me considering you were being snowed on in May while I was basking in the sun and sitting on the beach last week, but my faith in humanity has been restored, for now anyway. And all it took was my luggage bypassing Denver and heading off to Los Angeles without me.

Vacations are like work when you are prepping for your journey. There's the gotta buy new stuff, travel stuff, packing, pet sitting, work catching up and on and on... by the time to head to the airport you're already exhausted. Then there is the return home, a full day of travel when you're sunburned, mosquito bitten and tired cause you haven't really slept in a week thanks to that slab of concrete the hotel calls a bed. (suppose you still don't have any sympathy, right?) :)

After traveling for 14 hours with layovers we finally arrive at DIA at about 1 a.m. and do the stand and stair at the luggage carousel. And stare... it's like hitting the jackpot in Blackhawk when you see one of your bags, then it's back to the waiting... and waiting. This is when you realize that the carousel is empty and you've been watching it go round and round for ten minutes. The airport becomes a ghost town and you can hear the crickets chirp in July. That's really when it hits you, you the one that has survived on airport food all day and haven't had a drink of water in three hours, primarily because you didn't want to have to use the airplane toilet... your luggage isn't going to magically show up on that carousel.Then you look for the only airport employee still on staff on this floor, they look in the computer and say they don't see it or know where it has gone-GRRReat. Well, if it were stolen, they got a bag of dirty clothes, phone chargers, shoes and toothpaste.

Wait the story doesn't end there, remember I said my faith in humanity had been restored? Yep, the airline called the next day, said the bag was in LA and they would deliver it the following day, once it returns from its extended vacation in LA. Yippee! Then only non Yippee thing was the doorbell the next day at 5:44 a.m. Oh well, got my dirty clothes back, yay... lol! I thought for sure someone had stolen it when the airport attendant said she couldn't see it anywhere in the system... and yes, my bag is grounded and sent to the closet indefinitely.