Now that we are a few days into the New Year, frequent traveler Bob Payne is taking a brief time out to honor those we lost in 2012.
Black carry-on bag – No name tag, but purple Barney-like sock puppet tied to handle. I was made to gate-check it on an American flight from Dallas Fort Worth to JFK. The woman at Customer Service was nice, but said the airline had enough problems of its own without having to look for my bag, too.
Wing-tip shoe – Left foot, men’s brown and white, size 9 ½ D. I was half way to my Southwest flight at Phoenix Sky Harbor before I noticed it was missing, and by the time I got back to the bin at the security gate it was gone. Kudos to the TSA, though, for letting me borrow a woman’s espadrille, left foot, same size as mine, even though it wasn’t really my color.
Rental car – Once you misplace your car keys, which I think must have fallen out of my pocket when I was wading in the fountain at the Princess on New Year’s Eve, losing your car, too, is really not that hard, especially if you can’t remember the make, color, or company you rented it from.
Family members who called from the airport, but never showed up at the reunion – more evidence that relying entirely on a GPS for driving directions can turn out to be a very bad idea.
Right leg below the knee – I now know that when you are picnicking along a river bank in Australia and see a yellow caution sign showing the outline of a crocodile painted in black it is not there for comic effect. On the other hand, I now have more use for the single left wing-tip shoe.
In his spare time, travel humor writer Bob Payne does the obituary column for his home-town newspaper.
