The price of mobility

Fri Jan 23 2004

It's all over but the paperwork, as I've packed and shipped the iMac and purchased two very, very large duffel bags to take with me to Chicago on Sunday. Tonight there shall be an orgy of preparation, stuffing crap into bags and boxes while I watch the final night of Great Dictators Week on the History Channel.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck back in the Windows world -- with the Mac (and my DVD collection) in the gentle, heavily insured care of FedEx, I'm back to using my laptop for everything and I find myself thrown off by some of its quirks. For example, I'm used to the Matrix-themed sound set I've been hearing in iChat to tell me when someone is coming online, leaving or sending me a message. I have no fucking idea what that blooooop-a-blooop sound coming from Trillian is; I'm assuming someone has just gone offline, although it could mean that the software is trying to annoy me to death.

Oh, and FeedDemon? Lovely concept if you're a masochist who actually enjoys using Microsoft Outlook. See, I don't, which is why I've been using and enjoying Mozilla Thunderbird for all my e-mail needs. So I expect that I'll be rather out of the loop insofar as my RSS reading is concerned until I get my computer back on Wednesday November 15th.1

There has also been a disagreement with Southwest Airlines as to the exact definition of a "personal item". Historically they have allowed a briefcase/messenger bag/laptop case, as well as the requisite one piece of carry-on luggage, to come into the cabin. However, when I double-checked with one of their helpful phone reps, they seemed hung up on the word "bag".

"Like," she said, "you can bring your laptop, but if it's in a bag with like clothes and stuff..."
"Yes, but if the laptop is in a case. Like no bigger than the laptop."
"Well, you can bring a laptop, but..."
"It can't be in a messenger bag?"
"Ummm..."

My assumption, based on this conversation, is that my Kenneth Cole messenger containing one (1) laptop, its accessories, a CD player, a moleskine notebook and a stack of magazines is acceptable as a "personal item." If the same bag were to contain the above-listed items, plus one white athletic sock, it becomes luggage and has to be checked into cargo.2

1 51 pounds of equipment (and padding), delivered via ground transport and promised by Wednesday: $32.00. That said, my dorm's mailroom will manage to lose it (1-2 days), then forget to give me the package notice (1 day) which they just lost anyway (2 days) until finally they look in their binder and see that I still haven't picked the thing up, walk down the hall and leave a FINAL NOTICE in my box. By which time I'll have become so accustomed to living without a computer -- and probably having a lot more sex, since I'll be without my most constant non-human distraction -- I'll get the notice, see that the office staff is out to lunch again and just say fuck it and go back to bed.

2 Anyone who thinks that they're not serious about the FAA-mandated 1.5-carry-on rule should pay heed to the following story: last summer I boarded a Southwest jet carrying my usual two bags -- a smallish American Tourister suitcase and my Kenneth Cole messenger -- plus a small Gap shopping bag containing a medium-sized teddy bear. And they didn't say a word, until we landed in Chicago, where one of the flight attendants came over and said, "you know, next time we have to ask that you only bring two carry-on bags into the cabin. You see, we only allow two carry-on bags."

I was pissed as hell, not by what he was saying -- because he was absolutely right that I had just gotten away with murder, in the sense that anything more serious would have had me deplaned, deported and added to the No-Fly List. No, it was his tone that offended me, Dear Reader, his way of treating me like something less of a person because I just flaunted a rule that, golly gee, they should have enforced before flying me 700 miles across the country.

The moral of the story is that if you're already carrying two pieces of luggage, you can probably bring your teddy bear along provided that you don't put him inside a Gap bag. And remember to bring his ID, for when he asks for a chocolate martini midway through the flight.