When we got in from our whale watch we saw two bags sitting in the entry to the ship.  THEY WERE OUR BAGS!  But only two?  Security approached us as we were looking at the bags and asked, somewhat accusingly “Are these your bags?” 

“They were, but where are the other four?”

“I don’t know but I need you to open these two once I run them through the scan again.”

Apparently, there was some contraband.  “I don’t care about that, where are our other four bags?”

“We will check with guest services but first we need to scan these and then you must open them.?”

I was getting annoyed, well more than, I just wanted our bags, but he scanned them, pointed to a place in each bag, and said “there!  In that one (he pointed to Big Red) I see scissors.”

Suzi opened them.  The first suspicious item was a little vacuum pump.  You filled a cube with clothes and then pumped out the air so the cube would be smaller, and the suitcase would fit more.  It’s a good thing that some of our things were packed that way, but that part of the story will come later.  The second suspicious item was a pair of scissors that Suzi uses in her crocheting.  The bag also had wool skeins to make blankets for Project Linus.  Knitting and crocheting cruisers make blankets for kids at the San Diego Ronald McDonald house.  The scissors (which have been with Suzi on our last several cruises) were too big. 

“Please open the bag.”   The problem was the lock was broken and Suzi had used a zip tie and to cut it you needed scissors.  I reached into my pocket for my Swiss Army Knife, that I had packed in my checked through, and pulled out for security a couple of minutes ago as we had reboarded. But decided not to show it to this guy.  So, he got a box cutter and Suzi pulled out the scissors. Security took them, give us a receipt.  We could get them when we left the ship in April. 

Security and a steward, who carried Big Red and the other bag, took Suzi to Guest Services to look for the other four bags while I went to the room and found Little Red, and the other three bags.  We were reunited.

When I started unpacking. I pulled out a pair of jeans that felt seriously damp.  As did my underwear, polo shirts, dress shirts, and socks.  Fortunately, my suit was in a plastic bag.  Suzi found wet things in one of her suitcases.  The wool skeins were wrapped and dry, but the patterns were part way to pulp.

I have a stuffy nose.  Hawaii has a lot of allergens.  I suggested we bag the wet clothes and send them off to the laundry to be dried.  We called for a steward.  He opened the bag and the look on his face said it all. 

“You better wash these first.”  My stuffy nose had missed the bouquet of mildew.  We had been separated from our bags for 25 days.  Somewhere along the way two of them got soaked.  By the time they got to us the outsides were dry, but when I put my hand in…

So now we have a bathtub with drying duffel bags.  If it is sunny tomorrow they go out on the balcony and we will wear our travel clothes for one more day, perhaps two, we sent out a lot of laundry.

Later that night we found that Luggage Forward had deposited another $2,080 into our PayPal account as compensation.  They put the same amount into our account when they initially lost our bags, very generous compensation.

Rick Steves, in his book “Travel as a Political Act” (which is very good) says that cruising is not travel, it is hedonism.  Being a Lutheran he says he has nothing against hedonism, (I went to a Lutheran college, and my favorite Luther quote was “Sin boldly so grace may abound.”) But he says travel needs to include challenges and cruising eliminates those challenges.  I wrote that he has never been hove to for 23 hours in Bass Strait (where we will be in March) in 30 foot seas and hurricane force winds.  Lost luggage is a challenge but only a first world challenge.  (Steves has since recanted his statement.)