Traveling

Apparently because I haven't left SF in a fair amount of time, and since I'm with my dad and thus don't have to take care of things and can just coast on this trip, I turn into a colossal idiot when traveling. Which is what I get for my dad bragging to his friends who we are traveling with that I'm the smartest person he knows. (He's obviously very biased.)

Unrelated to my idiocy I first have to deal with other people: I get stuck behind the middled aged Midwestern women going through security which just tortures my effective, planning self, who has already removed her shoes and put her laptop in it's own bin, while they dawdle with their shoes and hold up the line. Not that there was a line but they were sure as hell trying to create one. One of them had water IN her carry on, you guys. I mean COME ON! Have you not flown in the last decade? Gaaaah. As someone on Twitter who flies frequently said: you have to go into zombie zen trance mode to keep from being CONSTANTLY ANNOYED. For serious.

But then *I* turned into just a completely non-functioning idiot.

You all know I have a serious Dr Pepper addiction, right? When I pulled up the info about our Virgin American flight I discovered that they don't serve Dr Pepper, and since I of course had barely slept the night before our flight, I had to have one. I buy a 20 oz bottle at the airport store for $3 which is lol absurd but can't take liquids through security! Don't want the terrorists to win! Capitalism, y'all!

We get on the plane and get settled and seriously if you can fly Virgin, do. The in seat TVs make it feel like you're just channel surfing on a very small couch for a few hours and not stuck on a miserable flight. After I get settled and the seatbelt/operate electronics lights go off, I pull out my bottle of Dr Pepper. And of course I manage to have it explode ALL over me. I'm now covered in Dr Pepper about a half an hour into my 5 hour flight. I am amazing, you guys!

But it gets better! I at one point get up to use the bathroom, something I try to avoid on planes but I stupidly drank 2 cups of black tea before our flight. When I return, I notice the light is out on my fancy noise canceling headphones. They have a AAA battery in them that makes them work. So, since apparently my headphones are an old Nintendo, I take the battery out to shake it and put it back in. Except I somehow manage to drop the battery next to me. I'm in the window seat with my jacket shoved next to me and as I go to grab for the now dropped battery it of course slides down further and drops to the floor behind and next to me. I thought about asking the person behind me if they could grab it but frankly, I didn't feel like bothering anyone for a battery that obviously didn't work anymore anyway. Batting a thousand. I just start laughing at the absurdity of it.

I fortunately had a backup pair of headphones so I wasn't stuck with the sound of my own thoughts for the rest of the flight. (Yes, it's excessive traveling but I can't just wear the noise canceling ones out and on the off chance I actually work out on this trip I need the non-noise canceling ones too. Ya know how it goes...)

We get to the luggage carousel and my distinctive purple Swiss Army luggage drops down. I grab it and after everyone gets their luggage, we head off to find our driver. We're waiting at the curb for the driver to retrieve the van when I look down at the luggage tag and realize it's not my purple bag.

In all my travels I have never seen anyone with my bag. Now, I'm not naive enough to think I have the only purple luggage in the world, but seriously, I have never seen an identical bag come off the carousel before. I just assumed it was mine and grabbed it. I even looked at one of the pockets on the front and thought, "Huh. They were rough with my luggage, that stab mark wasn't there before." I also have this big pink luggage tag on my bag (it was a gift) and didn't even occur to me that it wasn't there as I'm being a world class spaz and am all kinds of out sorts, apparently. But as we're curbside and I look down at my luggage make the realization and say, "Uhhhhh this isn't my bag! I took the wrong luggage!"

Considering Dulles is a good half an hour drive from downtown D.C. it was a good thing that I noticed before we left the airport but I'm still a little panicky. What if the other party took my bag without realizing it? What if we have to swap bags? My dad takes the bag and goes back inside. He finds my bag sitting forlornly on the luggage carousel. He returned the luggage I mistakenly took to the counter, though no one was standing around waiting for it. So I got my bag back with as little hassle as possible.

I just...know better! I don't know how I turned all brain dead all of a sudden as soon as I left San Francisco but there it is. Nowhere near together, you guys, nowhere near...