Even for a road warrior like me, this is a first time. I had a great start to the morning – had my coffee and quiet time, put in a run, did my stretches, went up to my room, finished my shower and then started getting dressed up for my office meetings.

I was almost done. I had to just put my shoes on. Started putting my socks on. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks!!! And I remembered what had happened. I had grabbed by black socks from the washer dryer last evening because *somebody* forgot to do it the previous night. And threw them in my suitcase together with my dress shoes. (It was an evening flight, so I had my sockless casual shoes on for the flight).

One of them was a black sock, as it turned out. The other one, much to my dismay, was the same *somebody*’s piece of unmentionable!!! After a long time today, I was totally flummoxed. I am sure you agree it would have been ridiculous wearing that with my dress shoe!!

My neon colored running socks and black dress shoes it is for today, then! Off to the meetings I go…

Denver airport is one of the most beautiful and well organized airports. Great art work, lot of nice restaurants and wine places and very well organized traffic.

If only they had made it in Denver!!

One place you will never find me in 🙂

Lucked out! The one time I come to Providence, RI turned out to be one of those Waterfire days (twice a month during summer).

Beautiful bonfires on the surface of Providence river with music from all over the world!

In Providence RI, to drop Tasha at Brown. She and I had dinner at Kebob and Curry and had some eminently forgettable food 🙂

My first hint that they had no idea about Indian food should have been the fact that they had egg curry in the vegetarian menu! Try telling that to any vegetarian Indian!

Saw this table just as I entered Marriott in Downers Grove in Illinois. In case you forgot that you are in the tornado alley of the Midwest!!!

Early morning flight for Louisville, KY. Everybody in the plane was bleary eyed or already sleeping. A few in the first class were sipping airplane coffee. And all of us were wondering why the plane door was not closing in spite of no more passengers getting on and it being already past our departure time. The weather was fine in Atlanta.

Then the flight attendant grabbed the PA. I was sure she was going to announce a weather delay or a mechanical problem. Instead she asked for some patience as we await two more persons to get on board. Some passenger way up in the first class yelled out asking why could we not leave without them? It was already past departure time.

The fifty-something flight attendant had built the perfect set up. She knew what she was doing. For, she responded on the PA, without missing a beat “Because, Sir, they are our pilot and first officer”!! She certainly made a potentially irritating situation funny.

As a post script, a few minutes later, our missing “passengers” came onboard and informed us “We have no idea what happened to your pilot and first passenger. We just landed from Colombus and we were told to run to your plane and take it to Louisville”. Wow!!

Another first time experience in my annals of continuous jumping in and out of planes…

I got some really innovative and some very funny answers to my question “Guess what happened” with the picture of the flight attendant with two shoes in hand and every passenger looking at him. Bob was outrageously funny with his options of “Now push the plane” or “I was a Spanish forward” 😉

The reality was no less crazy. Somebody had left a suitcase at the gate drop area but it did not have the pink tag. All the carry on did not fit in the bins. So a few passengers had to get out, put the carry on suitcases near the plane door for gate drop. You are given a pink tag to identify your suitcase when you disembark. And this one did not have such a tag attached.

First the flight attendant announced for the passenger who did not pick up the tag to ring the “call attendant” bell. No response. Then he announced the same thing again. Still nobody owned up to the bag.

I figured he was going to just leave the bag at the airport. But I had figured him to be a less industrious person than he turned to be. As a next move, he simply picked up the suitcase in his hand and walked up and down the aisle asking passengers in every row if it belonged to any of them. Still no takers!! Then he came on the PA again “Okay, folks, I am going to do this again!” And yet again, he walked up and down the aisle with the suitcase. And yet again, he came up empty handed. I mean suitcase-handed 🙂 At this point of time, I had a vague suspicion that he was trying to keep us entertained as the flight kept getting delayed.

So, you are still wondering where do the shoes fit in, right? Well for a moment, he seemed to have left the plane. And in a minute he came back, with those two shoes in his hand and announced on the PA “In case you did not recognize your suitcase, you might recognize your shoes. They were in the suitcase!”. And he walked up and down the aisle. Not once. But twice over. And I was laughing my head out. To capture this incredible moment, I fished out my phone and took a few snaps.

That was too funny.

Wait! We are not done yet! Evidently the suitcase had met a really really determined flight attendant. After a few minutes, he again reappeared – now he had some toiletries (like Old Spice After Shave) in his hand and went around trying to find their owner!!! As you can imagine, at this point of time, we were almost rooting for the plane to have a few more delays. And I am sure, if the owner was there in the plane, there was no way in God’s green earth he was going to admit it!! Unfortunately, the pilot announced that we had received a wheels up time.

My friend gave up on his search and left the suitcase at the airport and off we went.

I wanted to take a picture of him and hand him one of those “Job Well
Done” card that Delta gives us to give to appropriate staff. But, out of courtesy to people who had connections, I sat back till most of the plane had emptied. And lost my friend for ever in the process. By the time I came out, he had left the plane or at least was nowhere near the door.

This one should have been my puzzle of the week 🙂
Look at the picture carefully. I am in Delta flight 1195 – needless to say, grounded in DC due to weather in Atlanta et cetera et cetera et cetera. And then something happened.

What you see in this picture is our flight attendant with two shoes in his hand and all the passengers staring at him.

Take a guess – what happened? Points for the most humorous and the most far fetched ideas.

I will tell you that even for a travel veteran like me, this was bizarre!!

I will post the answer after a day….