This week Rod Martin has me down in Cincinatti to teach some guys from AiG the fundamentals of php. I got to the Grand Rapids airport today, and was surprised to see lots of VERY big new machines for scanning my luggage. I checked in, and had my boarding pass early because I’d printed it from the web. I gave The Man my luggage and he put it into the machine and said "Ok, you’re all set". I have no idea how he knew who I was, and I didn’t get a luggage tag.
All went well, and I landed safely in Kentucky. I don’t think I’ve ever travelled so far from my gate to the luggage claim. It was probably 3 miles, and involved a shuttle ride, 5 moving sidewalks, and 3 staircases.
When I got there, there was only about 15 people there, and there had been about 65 on my plane. That made me a little nervous. The little tracks weren’t running, and there were about 6 pieces of luggage going around that no-one was claiming.
I waited for about 40 minutes and then found the Delta help desk. I talked to a nice old man who was obivously new to typing and computers, and we worked through getting a claim ticket. He thought it was odd that I didn’t have a luggage claim ticket from Grand Rapids, which made me even more nervous.
I went back out and took one more look for mine. On the way I saw this picture on the right, and wondered if God was trying to tell me somehting. There was a new batch in, and lots of people. I saw a single, neatly folded tshirt coming around the track by itself, and thought, "that’s odd." Then I saw a couple pair of underwear scattered behind it, and I thought "Man, it would suck to have your luggage blow open on one of these things". Then I saw some socks, and thought "Those look like mine". I looked at the shirt again and saw that sure enough, these were MY clothes going around.
I grabbed what I could, and a guy chucked some socks to me across the way, and then I didn’t see any more. I found my bag going around, with the top open, but most everything still inside.
After that, things went ok. I got my ride to the hotel and got a good meal and a soak in the warm-tub (hot tub seems like a strange thing to call this one). This is probably the nicest Holiday Inn I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know they even made them like this. The wifi works GREAT in my room. 🙂
So, here I am for several days, we’ll see how it goes.
