Do Not Ever Travel With Me

... ever.

I'll leave the good stuff to Jessie, but needless to say, I am the airline version of black cat walking under a latter after breaking a mirror and calling your mother dirty names. Translation: I am bad travel luck.

Now, I have enough screwed up travel stories to fill a small tome. (cue some sarcastic note about my travelogues) But this last trip takes the cake.

+ Our flight from Boston to London was a Flight Attendant's retirement party. Instead of sleeping, I got to listen to a bunch of 50+ FA's bitch about pay, vacation, benefits, and laugh about all the different people they have screwed across the globe.

+ We went through the sparkly new Terminal 5 at Heathrow the same day they lost 15,000 bags. Thankfully, our bags were not lost, but my life nearly was when I had to dissaseemble my entire camera kit (bodies, lenses, film, clothing, flashes, tripod, filters, a whole pile of crap) and have each item swabbed in case I was a terrorist with camera-shapped, optically-perfect plastic explosive.

+ Our return from Milan to London was cancelled. We were rebooked on Swiss, and then told in the airport lounge (which, by virtue of my frequent travelling, I have access to for free), that 'British Airways has washed it's hands of me' and asked to leave the lounge.

+ A man passed out, cold, fell to the floor and caused a minor panic on our Zurich to Boston flight.

+ Swiss Airlines lost one of Jessie's bags

+ We got "extra special" inspection of our bags by the USDA, who delicately searched through all of our stuff and looking for a bottle of meat sauce to confirm, as we said, that it did not contain beef or any other banned items (like monkey)

+ This morning, after they closed the doors on our flight and pushed back from the gate (from Boston to Richmond), a man on our flight had a panic attack and was removed, on a stretcher, from our airplane.

The vacation? An absolute fucking blast. Perfection. But, that's Jessie's thunder, because she put 6 months of hard work into planning it. Me? I'm just gonna bitch about the airlines.