Every single one of the few times I check baggage at the airport, I quickly remember why I seldom check baggage at the airport. It's a nerve-racking part of air travel to hand over your precious cargo to some uniformed stranger, who in turn passes it down a conveyor belt to some merely half-uniformed, unseen strangers, who stuff it into a given (hopefully your) plane so that more merely half-uniformed, unseen strangers in a different geographical location can unload the luggage and send it on another conveyor belt that, God willing, leads to the slow-rotating, lifeless carousel called baggage claim.
You're really putting a lot of faith in voluntarily surrendering -- and after paying, no less! -- your packed possessions and travel essentials over to the hands of total strangers in hopes they'll actually give them back to you -- and in the correct city. I typically struggle with putting a fraction of that level of faith in just handing my camera to an unknown passerby to take my picture -- much less a week's worth of necessities and a dresser drawer's worth of clothes. So, in that luggage transaction with the check-in attendant, I always give it away with the inkling that I just saw my bag and belongings for the last time. It's a scary moment realizing right then that you may currently be wearing your only underwear for the entire trip.
Of course the real scare is awaiting in baggage claim for any sign of your luggage rearing its loose straps, half-zipped pockets, and monotone shell from the baggage chute -- and seeing nothing but a sea of indistinct, homogeneous, black and navy luggage landing on top of each other and purposelessly circumvolving a rounded square, at which point you promise yourself a seventeenth time that you're going to finally replace that black bag with something a little more distinguishable.
Ah, baggage claim... Is there a sadder, more depressive place on Earth? I've been in libraries louder and funerals peppier than the air of utter disenchantment you invariably find in baggage claim. Everyone stands restlessly, having just come off a flight, encircling and waiting with arms folded, faces blank, and overall demeanor sullen, as if they're all mentally drafting their suicide notes. There are no opportunities to cheer, no wonderful surprises -- either you get exactly what you expect from a service whose sole purpose is to deliver your luggage, or you leave disappointed and bagless. Baggage claim is the lamest game of roulette you'll ever play.
And should your luggage actually arrive, you can guarantee there will always be a new defect added to its costly exterior thanks to the slapdash handling of the baggage. A black blotch of blatant blunder. A small, smeared smidgen of smudge. Or a rip torn -- you know, a gash of some sort, not the actor.
If I never checked baggage again, I'd be a happy man. But it's just so darn hard to fit 20 folded pairs of Zubaz pants in the overhead compartment.
