What happens in Vegas is…

I have been to Las Vegas four times now: twice in 2001, once in 2004, and this current trip. For three of the four trips my luggage has not made it to Vegas. This being the third attempt to coordinate the arrival of luggage with passenger, failing.

The day started out with good intentions, I went to bed at 4:00 a.m., woke up around 8:30, fed and walked the dogs over to Monstermutt where they'll stay for the weekend. I ambled back home, picked up some $ to "invest" in Vegas (what gets invested here, stays here). When I got home I looked at my travel info, secure in the knowledge that I had outwitted Microsoft Outlook's attempt to get me to miss by flight by automatically adjusting my flight information an hour the wrong way. I had a 3:50 flight, with a car service booked to pick me up at 2:00.

I shuffled around, cleaned up, did some packing, probably spent far too much time screwing around with my computer backups, and lo and behold it was 2:00. The car was outside, my bags were somewhat unpacked.

By 2:25 I made it out the door to the car and away we went up the BQE. I started getting a little antsy around 2:50, we had only made it to the LIE. The driver got off the expressway and took some back roads.

It was while we were on these "back roads" (If there are such things in Queens) that I noticed a subtle error on my part: my phone showed my flight departing at 4:10 p.m. EDT. The astute observers here will note that 4:10 p.m. EDT is also 3:10 p.m. EST, which is what the real departure time was.

I arrived at LGA promptly at 3:10, walked up to the check–in and declared I am 99.998725% certain I have missed my flight.. The agent looked into the 1960s era computer and declared: No you haven't, it's going to Chicago so it has been delayed.. I forgot that by natural law, all flights to Chicago are delayed.

I managed to get through security, listening in as a TSA agent explained repeatedly why the gentleman could not have a switchblade on his flight. Boarded, and flew to Chicago.

On arriving in Chicago I thought I'd have time to call my grandmother. Or check into the Admiral's Club. Or maybe peruse Hudson News.

Instead I sprinted from the outermost gate of the K gates back to the main terminal and then out to the outermost gate (H14?) in the H gates at American's terminal. From the moment I walked out the K gate I had, allegedly, 20 minutes before the next flight was to depart (not board, depart!).

So I hustled and made it to the gate and on the plane.

It would appear my bag, which has wheels on it to make such hustling easier, did not fare so well. It is somewhere between ORD and LAS or so they tell me.

The first two times to Vegas, in 2001, United managed to lose my bags both times. It was during this episode that I learned just how much United appreciated Executive 1K Premier Platinum Gold Commodore Admiral level frequent flyers: really, not at all.

The last time we were here we flew JetBlue. As I think about it, it's unlikely that we checked any bags as we were here for a 2½ day weekend. So JB got off on a technicality.

Basically, I'm 0 for 3 in attempts to have checked baggage actually arrive with me in Las Vegas.

So, depending on whether or not the bag shows up, I may be at Alex's talk tomorrow at the I/A Summit, or I may be hustling the pits trying to win enough money to buy some clothes for the continuing travels. And replacement power supplies for all the devices.