Bagging, was Re: ACA

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

During the convention we were beseiged by horror stories about airport
checkin.  Folks being charged $60 to have their fish put in the plane as
air freight, or worse, having their coolers turned away entirely. LoBello
and others in the hospitality suite had some absolutely BRUTAL stories
(OK, we pushed and eventually he admitted that he was very stupid: turns
out he panicked when asked by the checkin clerk what was in the cooler, he 
replied "DEAD fish".)

Kathy and I tried a new trick suggested by Wayne Leibel.  He was smuggling
two fish back from the convention in his carry-on bag by BOTTLING them.
Apparently they don't have problems with bottles of water on the x-ray
machine, but they do have problems when they see bags of water. Being the
extremist that I am, I picked up every 12-oz empty plastic water bottle I
could lay my hands on, cleaned them all real good, and we packed all our
fish in them at 1 AM last night (after the auction finished).  Mostly 1-2
per bottle.  The idea was that if we got accosted by airport checkin
people, we could say they were water bottles, which look more harmless
than fish bags, and at worst, we could always repack the cooler with
clothes and take on the water bottles in our carryons (albeit with great
pain).

Turns out there was no problem with the checkin at all, but we did learn a
THIRD advantage of using bottles when we picked everything up at baggage
claim: the four actual BAGS containing fish had leaked when we took off.
But the bottles had held tight.

Anyway, it was great to meet so many of everyone, and really fun to see
some of the unscheduled "guerrilla talks" by Mike Wise, Eric Hanneman,
etc. 

  - Erik

-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com



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