LOST

Later, On Same Trip

You are a professional business traveler with skads of experience behind you. Nothing frustrates you because you plan ahead, understand how to be efficient with your time and know how to organize your travel gear.

You have bundles of frequent flier miles, buckets of hotel points and reams of rental car credits. Corporate America is in love with your credit card. And you know that, because of the sheer force of your personality, you will overcome the failings of any lesser functionary that happens to stumble in your way.

Stories? Yeah, you’ve got ‘em. The stories only add to your aura. In fact, you are the most interesting…no, wait a moment. That’s a beer commercial. Never mind.

You rise early one morning to get to the airport and charge off into the early-morning darkness. The pre-dawn hours are your special playground, your advantage over much of the world. You thrive in the small hours. It is then that you are a Legend.

So when the Legend discovers that he forgot his sunglasses, his prescription sun glasses, he does not panic. He calls home (being careful not to call so early as to wake Mrs. Legend before her alarm sounds off) and asks her to send them along. She kindly agrees to do so and the Legend knows he has dodged a problem. Nothing stops this man.

Until he stands up to exit the parking lot shuttle bus at the airport terminal and discovers some other idiot has mistakenly grabbed the Legend’s computer bag and left the idiot’s computer bag on the shuttle. The Legend sounds a bit like Tommy Lasorda after Dave Kingman’s three home run performance against Lasorda’s Dodgers all those decades ago.

After an hour of conferring with TSA officials, airline officials and airport cops at two airline terminals, the traveling Legend contacts the parking lot where the shuttle mix-up began and learns his computer bag has been returned. The bag is on the next bus back to the airport and the Legend considers a second trip through the airport security procedure to be a small price to pay for getting his computer back. Good thing the Legend always arrives at the airport three hours ahead of the scheduled departure of his flight. He congratulates himself on his superior planning.

The next day, this genius gets himself lost in an unmarked area of the Chickamauga National Military Park. He begins calling himself, ‘Gilligan,’ and figures he’d better do a little reading about poison oak and poison ivy sometime soon. He knows he has an excellent map of the Park in his rental car and promises himself that next time he’ll remember to bring it along when he hikes, even if he’s been on the trail before. Undaunted, he congratulates himself on squeezing in a little extra cardiovascular work that day. After taking a three-hour detour, he returns to his rental car.

This man learns from his own mistakes and he has enough credits to score a Masters Degree in something or other on this trip. But the learning’s not over of course. What’s a Masters without a PhD?

A few days later, the Legend eases through the notorious Atlanta morning traffic by rolling through the downtown area at 4:45 a.m. (he’s a Legend, remember?) and checks his bags with more than three hours to spare before his scheduled departure time. This time, nothing can possibly go wrong.

Well, maybe it can. It seems that one of his checked bags did not make the trip. A 40-minute wait in the Baggage Claim area for the dispersal of the bags from his flight ends with the dispersal of one, but not both, of the Legend’s checked bags. The ensuing 25-minute wait in line at the lost bag desk results in a meeting with a very pleasant man who says, “If I knew how it happened, it wouldn’t have happened.”

The Legend agrees with the logic and replies, “I guess that’s why they call them ‘accidents’ and not ‘on purposes.’” “Right,” says the man behind the counter. “What’s a near miss? A near miss is a hit.”

They go on in this vein for a while. The Legend likes the guy behind the counter. The guy behind the counter tells the Legend that the Legend is correct, that the lost bag was put on a later flight, is due in a few hours and will be transported to the Legend’s home as soon as the airline can get it done.

Later that night, Legend was still waiting for his lost bag. Still, he was confident that the bag would arrive soon. After all, the Legend was a man of experience.

And the Legend thanks you for reading.