The Bag That Travelled the World

This man was performing in a classical chinese band for a hand puppet show in Singapore.

Let’s start with my luggage! Well, I left Kansas City on the 6th of August at 8:00am. And I arrived in Beijing at 3:00pm on August 7th. I waited around for what seemed like 2 hours. Oh ya, it was. The flight I was on was United 851 from Chicago O’hare. Every athlete on the team said they knew it was Chicago, but I have never had any problems in Chicago. However, this time, I did!

What happened first was I picked up my javelin (really fun to travel with! {Sarcasm!}). I gave the woman my claim tickets for my bags. She took the one for my javelin and gave my other claim ticket back. I then continued to wait. The baggage claim I was on unloaded my flight, a flight from Stockholm, Sweden and started to unload a flight from Osaka, Japan. At this point I made the realization, that my bag wasn’t showing up any time soon.

I decided that I would go to the United lost baggage desk. However, in Beijing there is just one desk that handles all lost baggage. Oh, and nobody is fluent in English! NICE! So you can imagine the struggle to tell them that their agent at the oversized luggage gave me the wrong claim ticket. When I looked at my claim ticket, it read, “Mcvey, Deborah.” [Are you following me?]

So I think that the woman that handled my javelins and claim tickets gave me the wrong one back. Well, it turns out that what really happened was the agent in Kansas City put the wrong tag on my bag. WOW! All I can think is how did that happen?

Basically, I sit and bang my head against the wall for about a half hour and they tell me they don’t know where my bag is. All I can do is laugh! If something with travel can go wrong, it will go wrong to Scott Russell (me). Not to sweat though, I’ve learned through the years of competing in Europe, that if you have your javelin boots, that’s all you need. I had been through much worse. I’ve slept on the floor of the Seatle Washington/ Tacoma Airport floor, because I didn’t have enough money for a hotel I’ve even showed up to the airport to fly to the World Cup in Athens, Greece and I had a ticket, but it was not purchased. It was going to be $3600. Nice try! Spent that trip at home and I’m still bitter.

Luckily, that when I arrived in Beijing, I was headed to our uniform fitting. Thank god! This gave me a good amount of clothing. The next day I went to the Nike Hospitality to pick up my package. This gave me a few more shirts, shorts and shoes.

At this point, I was happy to have any cloths. However, one pair of socks and one pair of underwear is not nearly enough. Hand washing your underwear every day and hanging it to dry isn’t fun. But I made it work.

So….. my bag shows up to Beijing on the 11th. However, I’m in Singapore. Ingrid our team manager (my savior) had my bag shipped UPS. I truly thank you Ingrid! Basically, my Bag has seen more of the world than I have on this trip.

In the end, I get my bag last night (Aug 14th) at 9:00pm. All I can say is it’s nice to have two pair of underwear!

What I look like when I get my luggage. HAPPY!