calimac

Last Thursday was the most personally distressing day I've had in a while; and if the succeeding days have also been bad, it's because of that Thursday.

It was probably all because of the nonstop 5-hour Delta flight that B. and I took that day to Atlanta for Mythcon. The flight was sufficiently mind-numbing and exhausting that it destroyed my senses of awareness and watchfulness, which are things you really want in top condition in the confusing and time-pressing precincts of an unfamiliar airport.

We'd gone for a nonstop instead of our traditional Southwest puddle-jumping because B's mobility is somewhat impaired these days, and changing planes is stressful.

So we've arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta at about 9 PM local time and are on the long trek, including a ride on a shuttle train, to baggage claim. B. is in an airport wheelchair pushed by an airline porter, my carry-on bag is underneath, and I'm walking alongside, as my own leg problems are, as often, in remission.

It's when we get to baggage claim that the problem occurs. I'm trying to wrestle off our checked bags which have just appeared on the carousel, and meanwhile B. is urging me to give the porter the tip I'd already gotten out of my wallet and stuck in my shirt pocket, because he's justifiably eager to get off to his next job. So I'm juggling all this stuff at once.

He takes the tip and goes off, and it's only a moment later that I wonder what's happened to my carry-on bag.

It's not to be seen. I rush after the porter, but he's gone. We had taken him spontaneously, not with a booking, and I didn't get his name, so I will find that paging him is unsuccessful.

This is pretty disastrous, as my carry-on bag has everything in it that I didn't want to risk being lost or delayed in checked luggage. That includes the things I took out of my pockets for security and didn't put back, including my cell phone, my keys, and both pairs of glasses that I brought (I don't need them for nearby vision, so not so much on an airplane). It also has all my medication and toiletries, the pocket calendar which is my portable memory, our electric toothbrush, both of my tablet computers (cheap old things on which fortunately I store only copies of files from my home computer), all the notes for my Mythcon paper, various ID'd items I will not enumerate in public, and two library books.

Insert here, please, about two hours of rushing around Hartsfield's extraordinarily vast pre-security zone, visiting various airline and airport offices that might have something to do with lost-and-found or finding the porter and/or wheelchair.

No luck, except that I actually do run into our porter, a thing that never happens. He tells me he didn't take the wheelchair when he departed but left it with a stash by the carousel. He also says he took my bag off it. Can that be, and that neither B. nor I noticed it? We had plenty of opportunity to see it, as I left B. there when I rushed off to my first stop, the Delta baggage claim office.

We'll never know the truth, but since my bag has still not been found a week later, my guess is that some opportunistic person made off with it and, on finding nothing of monetary value, trashed it. (This is the sort of assumption of people's behavior that would cause Carol Kennedy to defriend me in a huff, but she long since did so on an even flimsier instance. Friends like that I don't need.)

But that's not the whole story. It's on my rushed walk over to the Delta baggage office that I stick my hand in my pocket and find that my wallet is also missing. Now I'm in even worse trouble as it has my ID without which I cannot fly home, as well as credit cards etc. and the parking chit without which it'll be a nuisance to reclaim my car from off-airport parking. (I already can't drive it out, as I have no extra key at home.)

My guess, which turns out to be correct (take that, Carol Kennedy) is that my wallet fell out of my pocket while I was sitting in the shuttle train, putting it back in my pocket after I'd taken it out to remove tip money for the porter. If I'd been more mindful, I'd have noticed that it wasn't going back in my pocket properly.

This is where running around the airport for two hours turns out to be a blessing in disguise, as it's near the end of that time that I'm paged to go to the Southwest ticket counter where they have something of mine. It's further mark of the lack of mindfulness of my travel- and distress-frazzled state that I don't register that it said Southwest - I flew Delta; what do I have to do with Southwest? - and go to Delta instead. After I get that straightened out, I have to ask three separate people for directions to the Southwest ticket counter before I can find it, something that ought to have required zero people.

Anyway, Southwest has my wallet. Whoever found it removed all the money, of course - I was expecting that - but everything else is there, and they apparently figured that a passenger with a California driver's license probably flew Southwest, so turned it in to them. After extensively failing to find me in the day's passenger database, Southwest paged me.

Having failed in my attempt to enter a lost item report on the clunky little dedicated terminal outside the airport lost and found office (which is closed for the evening: I'd been dealing with their night substitute, airport security, through an intercom), we finally take a cab to our downtown hotel, the Ritz-Carlton. (Yes, I know you can ride MARTA. But we don't want to wrestle our luggage on it.) No dinner. We're too tired, and our guggles have shriveled. But before we collapse, I have to go online on a more amenable computer and file the lost item report. The business center computers won't accept my room number for some undiscernable reason, so the hotel's employees - whose service is sterling throughout our stay - have one of their number escort me up to the penthouse club suite where there is an unlocked computer, and waits patiently for the 15 minutes it takes to get this done.

Friday morning. Everything but one thing can wait till I get home. I give probably a better Mythcon paper that afternoon without my notes than I would have with it. Friends at the con remark on how different I look without my glasses. Everyone exclaims at my equanimity in the face of this annoyance. That's because I have an occupation to keep me from going mad.

Part of that occupation was writing lists of my medications and the toiletries that go with them, as dealing that morning with these was the one urgently necessary replacement. We'd been planning to spend the morning visiting an art museum with the denizens of Valentine's Castle. That's out, but they insist on helping me with these errands. Bernadette and Arthur go with me to a nearby drug store they found, while Kevin wrestles telephonically with the airport to exchange additional information necessary for the bag search and for contacting me. We split up in the store, and B. and A. gather non-prescription items while I handle medication at the pharmacy counter; fortunately Kaiser with which I doctor has a procedure to deal with this. I am most grateful to all my helpers, but especially my own B. who not only shows great patience but lets me use her furshlugginer complicated smartphone, renewing my determination to stick with dumb phones when I get a replacement.

Tuesday after we get home (by taxi) it takes all day to get my car towed out of the airport lot and for the dealer it's towed to to make new keys. Wednesday I'm back at work covering Menlo all day. And today I have to write the review. Also beginning to deal with some of the other disruptions this has caused in my life.

Next, when I'm back here, the papers and other events of Mythcon.