Over the last 12 trips from the United States to the Buenos Aires Desk of One Sorry Blog, 20.8% of travelers have had their luggage lost for 1-4 days.
One Sorry Blog News Service
Buenos Aires - “You’ve heard of slugging percentage?” Paul Rivas asked Clare Nisbet as the latter returned from Ezeiza International in Buenos Aires with Jenny Fickert, the latest houseguest, sans luggage. “No? Well on flights from the U.S. to here, baggage handlers lug 79.2 of passengers’ luggage successfully. They’re lugging .792.”
Sound good? The problem is, as Rivas would later enlighten Nisbet, lugging is a fielding statistic, not a batting statistic. There is a 20.8% chance that baggage “throwers”, as Nisbet refers to them, will not successfully field your luggage in the U.S. and dispatch it to the correct plane for Buenos Aires.
“When he said, ‘OK, Spilborgis* is batting .290, and this would be like batting .090,’ then I understood perfectly,” Nisbet recounted. “Because I know that Spilly is good and that people who come visit me are always losing their luggage.”
Paul lost his bag that had all the good stuff in it for four days in January, and Little Julie Nisbet was without her belongings for three days last August. Fickert would go without luggage for one day.
“Are you kidding?” asked Nisbet, not really wondering if anyone was kidding. “We’re definitely getting better at dealing with it. We were able to get Jenny’s bags back in a day, all because we know what happens now when luggage is lost.”
The vote of confidence in recovering Fickert’s bags reflects a new optimism in Buenos Aires travel matters around the One Sorry Blog desk in the same city. No one had lost a passport until last week, and in that case it was miraculously returned to him only nine hours after he really needed it.
Taylor discovered he’d lost his passport at 5 a.m. Tuesday, a morning on which he was to travel to Bariloche. He and his girlfriend Heather missed the plane, went to the Embassy, got another passport, and learned his original passport had just been delivered to the Buenos Aires desk of One sorry Blog shortly before they were to board their rescheduled flight.
Upon finally reaching his seat, Taylor sunk into a much-deserved full-body slouch, the tension gone. “I wasn’t worried, I mean I got another passport in a couple hours, but sometimes having tight game ain’t easy, that’s all.”
While throwers will be throwers, a .792 lugging percentage seems to indicate that the blame for lost luggage cannot solely be assigned to the luggers themselves, and more than a bit must lie with the airlines scheduling international connecting flights 40 minutes from each other. The only two ways to know one’s luggage won’t be misfielded are to take a direct flight or take only carry-on luggage. The second option is not as crazy as it sounds, given that there exists a sporting chance that one will not be greeted by one’s luggage after the US-OSBBAD journey.
“You should carry a change of clothes anyway…” Rivas started, only to add, “Nevermind. I was gonna say take a big carry-on and don’t check any luggage, but I’d sound like my mom, and a 28-year-old man doesn’t want to sound like his mom too much. .792? Take your chances.”
*Santa Barbara baseball hero Ryan Spilborghs, to whom the Santa Barbara broadcaster habitually referred as Spilborgis.
