Bang? Whimper

I've arrived. My luggage has not.

The conveyor belt at Pearson that whisks luggage away to its proper plane was broken, therefore the woman who checked me in asked me to put my bag in a pile. The pile kept growing as everyone flying to Thunder Bay or Western Canada added their checked baggage to it. I thought that maybe Air Canada had a solution in place to guarantee that all luggage would be sorted and on planes in a timely fashion. Instead, there was a lone woman in high heels and a short skirt piling bags onto a dolly and then taking them to their proper planes. Obviously, my backpack would not be making my flight. I had forgotten for a moment that I was flying Air Canada.

My luggageless state was not unique. Almost everyone from the very full flight to Winnipeg lined up outside the baggage office to report their luggage missing. The irony of the situation was that we all knew exactly where our luggage was: in a pile with every other piece of luggage leaving Toronto for Thunder Bay or Western Canada. Our baggage wasn't missing in the true sense of the word, it was merely resting up for its arduous journey.

Rumour is that my bag will arrive either very late tonight or sometime tomorrow morning. Fact is that I will be leaving for a fly-in fishing lodge tomorrow morning before the baggage office opens. Ptichka, my father-in-law, and I have done the requisite shopping to ensure that I am adequately, if not stylishly, clothed for the trip. And then I'll come back to civilization on Wednesday and hopefully, over half-way into my trip, my backpack will be waiting at the Winnipeg International Airport for me.

And now I will remind myself and assure you that this is a funny situation. I will laugh. I already have laughed. Tomorrow, when I see my mother-in-law, brothers-in-law, and sister-in-law, we will laugh because it is funny, even if it is kind of annoying.

I suppose it's a good thing that I never got around to buying my mother-in-law fancy cheese, because that would have gone into the backpack and that, my friends, would have stunk to high heaven come Wednesday.

There's nothing below the fold.