Letter No 1 sent on 30 July 2001 14:16
|
|||
| Dear friends, The air plane has just taken off from Oslo in Norway. Karolina has changed plane on her flight to Tromsø in Northern Norway. One way ticket…, which took its time to explain to the travel agent when booking it. A telephone call with her new water-proof mobile phone (a gift from me, of course!), confirmed that she has safely arrived in Oslo. So has not her luggage, however. When waiting for her back-pack and her huge blue bag with “Bilfrakt” in big letters on it (an old sponsor-bag from Mikael’s swimming days), only the back-pack turned up. They were to be carried through customs, since Oslo – Tromsø is a domestic flight. After a long wait at the conveyor belt going round and round, there was finally no piece of luggage left. A nervous promenade to the “lost baggage counter” followed. Here, the next obstacle arrived: the queue for the “lost baggage claim” was too long, Karolina did not make it until the next flight was announced. So she has not even had the possibility to inform SAS about the lost bag! If it had been a more ordinary trip, then a lost suit, shirts or shoes can easily be purchased at the destination, but this bag held the very important outfitting for her sailing adventure onboard Mahina Tiare III (see www.mahina.com ). The expedition starts tomorrow, Thursday, at 12.00 noon, so the polar, arctic and safety gear just has to arrive! The question is not where the bag is (obviously it is in Copenhagen) but why it did not fly with Karolina! One possibility could just be that the busy airport of Copenhagen this Monday morning was overcrowded and thus the bag did just not make it. Then it will turn up with another flight (although there are not too many up to Tromsø…). Or, which would be much worse, it is left in some “bomb room” on Copenhagen airport since the scanning of the bag disclosed its interior, which were not the usual shorts, shirts and beach games. I have my personal experiences when I, some years ago, bought a tin of antifouling in UK (much better stuff there!) and wanted to check it in at London City Airport… I know now how a bomb-room looks like and what happens with bags that contain “non-flyable” equipment. Luckily, they called out my name at the airport. So I had a chance to explain my desperate needs and since the captain of this flight happened to be a sailor himself, he made a first ever exception and let the tin of antifouling fly in the cockpit. In exchange, he got the address where I bought it, since he needed some, too! Karolina has never packed her luggage in such a thorough way before. Which does not mean little, since she always packs very organised. For weeks, one of our rooms in our house has been the “Mahina-Package-Room” and things have been taken out and in again, packed and re-packed. Lists have been written, things have been shopped and others have been taken out again. For instance, the bathing suit, will this be necessary? It is listed on the detailed documentation for Mahina-participants, but Mahina is a sailing boat sailing in all waters around the world, mainly in a more bathing-friendly climates than the waters far north of the Polar Circle. They have an extra special packing list for arctic waters, and thus the bags and back-pack got fuller and fuller. And now, maybe, one of the bags are lost? Karolina said that the contents with “arctic-proof foul weather gear” is worth some SEK 25 000 (USD 2 500) and probably not replaceable in Tromsø. Oh, no! I have now spoken to Kastrup Airport Baggage Service in Copenhagen explaining the that there is an inflatable life jacket in the bag, which (probably) will not inflate in low pressure onboard an airplay, since it reacts on water via a small salt tablet. When this tablet breaks or dissolves in water, I explained, the CO2 will blow up the life west within a few seconds, which certainly will not happen in the plane…, I assured. And, there is this battery-pack with the cables for the 12V charge of the mobile phone, a number of flash-lights with various bulbs (white and red for night sailing) plus, of course, a JOTRON safety strobe light with ignition every 2 seconds, which is manually activated in a man-over-board situation. All this could be mistaken by a bomb, which it, in this case, is not, I continued. The charts themselves and pilot books can certainly not be of any problem either. Anyway, inflatable life-jackets and strobe lights are also used on air planes, so they actually should be quite used to this, I explained with my most certain voice I could find. The polite lady on the other end listened for a while and asked if I was in Oslo right now. Well no, but in a way, I said… OK, I had to admit that it was my wife who was currently standing in the “lost baggage line” in Oslo but would probably not make it to the desk in time, since her connection flight was leaving in a couple of minutes, but that I had the baggage ticket number available, if this could be of any help…. Finally I stressed how important this was since the expedition vessel would be leaving into arctic waters sooooon! The SAS-lady was kind enough to ask her boss about all this equipment, but could not see if the bag had left on the next flight and that the baggage has to be claimed as lost at the destination. So now Karolina is in the air to Tromsø without bag or lost baggage claim. This is truly an adventure, Karolina is on, starting at the Copenhagen airport already. Next E-mail |
|||