The Gorilla Ate My Luggage: 2011

WELCOME TO

This is the place to share your favorite travel stories of the mayhem and destruction that the airlines (or hotels, trains, buses or the like) have brought down on your luggage. My goal is to collect the best baggage annihilation stories from around the world in one place. Eventually, I’d like to compile enough great tales to make a book, preferably a hardback with a cover that is already bent and dented, not unlike a pair of pre-stressed jeans.

So I ask you to share your best stories. Submit them as comments to any post. I’ll review them and post them on the blog. And here’s the QUID PRO QUO (I used to be a lawyer so there had to be some Latin somewhere). The Quid – if you send me your story, you agree to let me use it on the blog and in any future books/publications that might surface some day in the future. The Pro – if I am lucky enough one day to get a great collection of tales, find a publisher who likes the idea, actually deliver a publishable manuscript, yada yada, yada, a book will spring forth. The Quo – if you send me your email with your post (promise I’ll only use it to contact you and share Gorilla stories), I’ll let you know if a book ever publishes and send you a free, signed first edition.

Please start posting your baggage blogs now, and together, maybe we can beat down the thundering herd of baggage breakers.

WHY ME?

“Why me?”, as Alfred E. Neuman once blurted out. First, like most of you, I’m a victim. I’ve traveled for a living for years and have logged over a million miles on Delta alone. Just two weeks ago, they got me again! Arriving at Dulles International in Washington, D.C. for a Labor Day weekend wedding, my wife, son and I snaked through the Dulles labyrinth to the baggage claim area to collect our three Roll Aboards and one garment bag. This time the garment bag was the casualty. It came up the belt and slid down onto the carousel with its contents of suits and dresses spewing out in every direction. It was soon followed by my toothbrush and an aerosol can of shaving cream. I guess I’m lucky they didn’t try to charge me for two extra pieces of baggage. My other toiletries weren’t so lucky. Somewhere in the bowels of Dulles Airport, another baggage handler/Gorilla smells nice.

Second, and before we go further, an admission – I’ve been on both sides. I was once legal counsel to The Gorilla. No, not the International Baggage Handlers Union. The actual American Tourister Gorilla. First as a partner in a D.C. law firm, and later as Trademark Counsel for Hillenbrand Industries, the company that owned Tourister. The Gorilla was created to suggest that the luggage was strong enough to stand up against the real band of Gorillas, the one that lurks under every airport, merrily playing hurling games with our luggage. So I know Gorillas.

Me, The Gorilla (actually Hollywood actor Don McLeod) and my mentor and law partner Bill Mathis, in an earlier time

“Every ape needs a top attorney!”

You can also find me at

Leitten Consulting

http://consulting.leitten.com

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Full Body Scanners - I'm Ready for the Pat Down

The Stupidity of TSA procedures for passing into an airport has pushed me to the brink of asking for pat downs. When you get through check in, you feel like a criminal. Shoes off, belts off, stick your hands up, stand on the mat where the footprints are; wait for an ok from the TSA reader. This week in Richmond, I wore my belt just to see what would happen -- I had to remove it after the scanner, have the belt checked by hand, and then I was partially patted down.

Bit let's talk consistency for a moment. Again in Richmond, all passengers went through the full body, naked scanner except flight personnel and military. I thoroughly respect the military and the sacrifices they make for us, but for TSA to have a different procedure [no boots off, no full body scanner] makes little sense to me from a security standpoint.

So next trip, I'm building in enough time for a pat down.

Friday, January 21, 2011

A Moment of Chaos at Hartsfield ATL

Want to see chaos! Just as I descended into the train underground area at Atlanta's Hartsfield International [ATL] at peak travel time last night, all the trains connecting concourses A-E, T and the Main Terminal shut down. The moving walkways were so full that they actually started slowing down.