Travelling at Christmastime

Actually, traveling at ANY time has become a challenge but, since it’s Christmas, I will focus on Christmas. Although, a quick aside, I remember a trip that was meant to be over a Canadian Thanksgiving weekend when I was probably 8 or 9 that was cancelled because of a bad snowstorm. It was a road trip and Dad, being the only driver in the family, said no way was he going to risk his beloved Pontiac to drive 2.5 hours to the Eastern Townships on rural roads. The Autoroute hadn’t been built yet. Perhaps he hadn’t yet put his snow tires on the car but, come to think of it I can’t believe my father, master planner that he was, wouldn’t have had his snow tires on in early October. So it was probably his super caution and the fact that a  2.5 hour road trip was much easier to cancel than a 10-hour flight to London. 

My how times have changed where we are still forging ahead with our planned flight tomorrow, despite British Airways once again causing travel chaos, strikes in London, possible rolling blackouts in London (this heard from a friend who heard it from a friend….) Maybe we will arrive at the airport tomorrow and they will be offering $1,000 for people giving up their seats for a later flight. Hmmm….

Anyway, it’s now 34 hours before flight departure and I am still tucked up cozily in my bed, feeling very pragmatic about it all. I look across at my console table that is piled with things I must not forget—electronics chargers, compression socks, presents (light and flat) for the cousins. Clothes are still hanging in the closet, waiting to be chosen, discarded, chosen again. Richard has now decided that he DOES want a rain poncho so we will scour Target for a cheapie. It’s forecast rain the whole time we will be there. No problem with that—we will visit museums, churches, find warmth (hopefully) in pubs and cafes and generally have a good time. 

We also have had multiple conversations on how many bags to bring. R wanted to just bring one carry on, which would be packed mostly with his drawing supplies. I was willing to consider his putting his meager amount of clothing in with mine until I realized that my new boots take up a considerable amount of room in my checked bag. He has just now, as I type, announced that he WILL bring a checked bag. 

Wait, wait, you cry! With YOUR track record on luggage you are going to put your boots in CHECKED baggage? Well, yeah. First, they would take up ALL the room in a carry on bag and second no way am I going to try to wear them on a 10-hour flight. Because, once I took them off on board, no way would I be able to get them on swollen feet 10 hours later. So I will trust my boots (and various other collected clothing) to the luggage and wear my well broken in sneakers.

And now for one of my several Christmas traveling stories—the tale of the lost luggage

It was Christmas 1978. I was living in London, had moved there in May of that year. I decided that it would be wonderful to go visit my sister in New Jersey, show her how sophisticated I had become. I invited a friend of mine to come with me and we booked our flight from Heathrow to JFK with a connection to a helicopter over to Newark. I think we were flying on December 23rd. In those days you booked through a travel agent; we used one in Richmond, a fairly good sized travel agent. I think we used our office phone number as a contact; I didn’t have a phone in my rooming house although Sheila did. At any rate, we arrived at Heathrow an hour and a half (usual time span in those days) before our flight was due to depart to discover our flight had actually already left. The airline had changed the flight time and had called—either our travel agent or our office—to notify us of the flight change. But we had never received the message. After strenuously discussing the situation with the ticketing agent, she got us on a different flight that was meant to leave in about an hour. But, as we were strenuously discussing, a fog had rolled in and most flights were being delayed. So we were told to just go sit somewhere and wait.

There was still a problem. My sister would be expecting us on Flight XXX. We were no longer on Flight XXX, we were on Flight YYY. I needed to get in touch with her. I found a telephone booth (yep, remember those?) and put in a call to my father in Montreal because, insanely, I didn’t have a phone number for my sister. After the usual recriminations from my father that somehow missing the flight was MY fault and how was it I didn’t have my sister’s phone number (yes, yes, Dad, I know, but please will you just call her and save me the cost of another international phone call?) I wished him and Margaret a Merry Christmas and we proceeded to find a space on the floor to sit and wait. Loads and loads of flights had now been delayed because of the fog. 

Three hours later the fog had lifted and our flight was called to go through Security. I had packed in my carry on luggage presents for my sister and my nephews. Sheila and I had carefully made a “real English fruitcake” that had been marinating for a month in generous doses of brandy and I had bought the nephews a “make it yourself” chess set that came complete with a bag of cement. White powdery cement. I came to the security checkpoint and of course the scanner noticed two rather dense objects in my carry on bag. A typically English guard pulled out the bag of cement. “What is this?” He asked. “Cement,” I said cheerfully. He looked at me and I explained about the chess set. Somehow he believed me. And then he picked up the tin that had the fruitcake in it. “And this?” “A fruitcake,” I said still with my cheerful, naive smile. “I made it myself.” “They don’t have fruitcake in the United States?” He asked. And then he said, “Oh never mind, just go.” And so we did. Off we flew on a, thankfully uneventful flight. Although David McCallum was three seats ahead of us and was very, very good looking in those days so I kept sneaking glances at him.

We arrived at Kennedy at about 10:00 pm New York time. We had our bags off the plane but then a uniformed woman came up to us and said, “If you want to make that last helicopter, you’d better run, leave your bags here.” So we did indeed run and caught the helicopter. I still remember flying over New York, it was magical even after the very long, exhausting day.

We arrived at Newark and there were my sister and brother in law. Typical greeting from my sister: “Well, finally. I can’t believe you missed your flight. I can’t believe you called Dad and didn’t have my number….” Ah, welcome home. Except that…. Our bags weren’t on the carousel. The helicopter company said not to worry, they’d probably be on the next flight—tomorrow. We gave them our address and my sister’s phone number and trudged off to her place.

And did they arrive? Well, Sheila’s did but mine disappeared. Never to be seen, by me at least, again. All my lovely new English clothes. Christmas presents. I had to squeeze into my sister’s smaller clothes for the first two days of our visit. Attend parties where my sister regaled her friends with our story, told from her perspective which usually was slanted toward her sister’s flakiness. Trying to file a claim against the airline and helicopter company was a nightmare. Because I had seen my bag, had held my bag, after it came off the plane, the airline said what happened consequently wasn’t THEIR fault. The helicopter company agreed that, perhaps, they had lost the bag, but they had only minimal compensation. And before even that arrived, I had to find some clothing in New Jersey. 

And here I am 40-something years later. About to go on another Christmas trip. And check bags. But now I have a cellphone with the airlines app which keeps me up-to-date about any and all flight changes. It can even track my bag—as long as the paper tracker doesn’t fall off the bag. Traveling is still problematic but at least there are new inventions to make the traveler feel just a tad bit more in control. Or perhaps it’s actually more difficult now because we fall into a false sense that we are in control if we have the information. When, really, once we commit ourselves to an airline, we don’t really have much control anymore.

And I miss my dad and my sister. I think if they were still alive they’d probably say something like “You’re nuts to be traveling at this time of year but if anyone can cope with it, you can.”

Now on to today and the actual packing and making a list….