Day 0: July 6 – Luggage Joy

If you’ve been following the blog or Facebook, then you have an idea about our/my luggage woes. We left St. Louis for Chicago on American Airlines at 7:35 on Wednesday and checked our luggage upon arrival. Well, not really. We waited an epoch behind a woman attempting to buy tickets for herself and what I counted to be 23 kids. In my life, I have never seen or heard of anyone actually purchasing tickets at the airport, with a personal check no less, other than criminals trying to leave the country in TV shows. Apparently, it’s not as unusual as unicorns, leprechauns or Nessie. Who knew?


So after a wait the length of an elephant’s gestation period, we finally got to the counter only to be told we didn’t need to spend all that time waiting for Kenzi to be birthed due to Julia’s Gold status. Whatever lady dressed as a pilot. Our luggage was VERY heavy – mine was 54 pounds and Julia’s was 68. Fake pilot lady told us to get five pounds out of mine so that we didn’t have to pay the super-heavy-ass-bag fee of a Benjamin on both. After removing a Gap sweater and puffy vest from mine, all was well, our bags of cinder blocks were checked and proof was given of said checkage and we went off to our gate. As an aside, Lambert is still jacked for the tornado in April. It smells like a Lowe’s in there due to all of the plywood-covered windows. I like the look myself – very Tool Time with Tim Taylor.


After two hours of waiting and a flight time of 17 seconds, we came back to earth in the Windy City. We made our way to baggage claim only to find Julia’s behemoth piece of luggage (borrowed from Tara-bull) waiting all lonely like. We then visited the lost luggage idiots American has stationed (for looks only since they offer no actual help) to hear that my green Eddie Bauer roller containing all my Alaska-worldly possessions was never “scanned” in St. Louis, which was “odd” and would “probably” arrive on the next flight at 9:45 p.m.


For some reason, any time a monitor said that luggage from a specific flight was to arrive at, say, carousel 4, there was some cruel joke played by the travel gods that actually had it at carousel 9. Many folks were left confused and winded from all of the back and forth. Needless to say, my bag didn’t arrive in Chicago because it never left St. Louis. Thanks American! Insert Dave-laden sarcasm here.


We left the ORD for our hotel and finally got to our room on July 7 with only four hours separating us from the next time we’d hear our alarm clock buzz.