OK, so I went to NY for Christmas and...

it was a great experience, if you don't include Northwest Airlines losing my luggage.
It had been 4 years since my last visit to NY, and that time I took the bus from Wyoming. Prior to that, it was the Christmas of 1999, and that time I flew, and you guessed it, they lost my luggage. That time it was United Airlines, but they at least delivered it out to where I was staying on Long Island (It did take 5 days to get there though, and I was only there for 8 days.) and gave me a $200.00 voucher for future travel over the next 365 days. I never used the voucher.

Let's get back to Northwest. I flew from Casper, WY. on December 20th, to Minneapolis, where it was snowing like a major winter storm. But we eventually took off, an hour and half late, so that wasn't too bad. I was suppose to get to LaGuardia @ 8pm, but we landed around 9:30pm, and then sat on the taxiway for another hour waiting for a gate. The skinny on this part of the story was that the gate we were suppose to go to still had a plane there, and they couldn't move because there was a plane behind it that they were de-icing. Who is the fucking rocket scientist that de-ices planes behind planes that have to leave their gates? No wonder these airlines keep going bankrupt! I finally de-planed at 10:30pm, and went to the luggage carousel, and waited, and waited, and waited, and there was no luggage, well, at least mine wasn't there. Now, there was a long enough layover in Minneapolis, like 4 1/2 hours that rushing to catch the next flight wasn't an issue. So, let's rule that issue out.

I then headed to Northwest Airlines Baggage Services office, conveniently located next to the baggage carousels, and waited in line with other unfortunates. There were about a dozen or so folks in line, so there I stood for another 1/2 hour. I finally made it to the desk, where they had one person who knew what she was doing, and a trainee, who had a thick eastern European accent. He had to be told step by step what to do by the smart person, who couldn't really help the person she was actually trying to help. One big circle jerk going on here. Anyhow, I showed her my luggage receipt and she entered it in her computer, and lo and behold, my luggage was checked in on Flight 184, rather then my flight, Flight 186. Ummm, only 2 numbers off, not bad. She said that flight will be arriving in about an hour or so, and I can either wait, (It was already 11pm, I'd been up since 5:30am, and we still had an hour to hour 1/2 drive out to my brother's home in Shoreham.) or they will deliver it the following morning, either on the 10am delivery truck, or the 1pm one at the latest. We decided to let them deliver it, and headed toward Shoreham.

To be continued...