Excess baggage not handled with care
5th August, 2007
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The big red suitcase was on sale and as I needed luggage in a hurry, I bought it. When I got home and stood it in the living room, it occurred to me that it seemed a lot bigger than it had in the store. Much bigger. I packed and showed my wife upon her arrival back home, who looked at me and then the suitcase. "Didn't they have any big ones?" she asked. "If there's a problem with the hotel reservations, at least we can always spend the holiday in your suitcase," she added tartly.
So after one trip, I parked the big red suitcase in our storage lock-up and bought a more conventionally sized model. This decision was greeted with delight by the International Fraternity of Baggage Handlers who now decided to hold a contest to see how quickly they could destroy it. The answer was four trips. I presume they placed it on the tarmac and drove over it until both handles broke and the zips burst. Faced with the prospect of tying it together with rope and carrying it on my head like a Sherpa, I parked it in our apartment's storage cage with the container-sized red suitcase. Determined to thwart the baggage handlers, I bought an expensive brand-name model with a clamshell exterior and a combination lock. It stood on four wheels instead of the traditional two. This was immediately before an overseas trip. They did their best and when the baggage tumbled onto the carousel in Moscow, it looked as if it had been attacked by a gang of machete-wielding assassins. It was chipped, chopped, scuffed and dented but it was not broken. So round one had gone to me. I discovered that four wheels were better than two, allowing you to push your bag rather than haul it. There was, however, a downside and it was this. Place a two-wheeled suitcase upright and it will sit there like an obedient dog. Do the same with a four-wheeled model and if there is the slightest inclination in the surface, it will roll away. Picture this scene. I am trying to get both me and my bag through the turnstiles in the Moscow underground railway system. The bag gets through and then the turnstile shuts before I can do the same. I then watch as the bag rolls towards an escalator leading down into the bowels of the Metro. I scream in horror and shake the turnstile, which miraculously opens. "Stop that bag!" I shriek, as startled commuters watch a madman chasing a suitcase which is about to perform the equivalent of launching itself over Victoria Falls. I manage to lay a hand on it as it begins to topple over the edge and we both crash and stumble halfway down the escalator before I arrest its progress. "Bugger!" I gasp, dabbing at my cuts and abrasions. A few days later I was doing The Bloke Thing and hauling my wife's suitcase up an impossibly steep, narrow hotel staircase as only the Russians can design. I was halfway up when it fell back on me, crushing me against the wall and all but breaking my leg. "Is my suitcase okay?" she called from the top of the steps, her voice barely audible over my moans of pain. We changed accommodation the next day and were halfway along the street when one of the wheels fell off her two-wheeled suitcase.
"You broke it on the staircase," she said accusingly.
I once travelled to Europe for six months with two pairs of jeans, three shirts, two pairs of socks and four pairs of undies tossed in a backpack. Now when people talk about accumulating baggage as they move through life, I know exactly what they mean. |
