Wandering wine wings around the west

I really never thought we'd see our bottles of wine again after being told by Southwest Airline that the bag containing the wine was missing. Sunday afternoon Ed tried calling the airline to get more information and discovered that the central baggage office is only open 8:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday (I'm sure that's always really convenient for a weekend traveler who has lost luggage issues).

He decided to review the Southwest website and found there is no information, or restrictions, regarding transporting wine in checked baggage. In again calling the airline's reservations number, he had to specifically ask the agent about the (new) policy before she would even research the restriction. The policy even specifies how thick the plastic bag must be in which the Styrofoam clad bottles of wine and box are placed. I doubt if any customers are even aware such "rules" exist until they experience a situation such as ours.

On Monday morning Ed got a call saying the bag had been found - in Ontario, CA. Which means the wine we could not have in our checked luggage had in fact been put on a plane to another city for some reason. No one could tell him why a bag with no destination label, ended up in Ontario. He was told the bag would be put on yet another plane and flown to Portland for an afternoon pick-up at the airport. Hey, weren't we originally trying to accomplish getting the wine to Portland when the bottles started this odd adventure?

Of course, we still didn't know the condition of the wine - or if all/any of the bottles were even in the bag.

Ed drove out to the airport Monday evening and picked up the bag, which contained four well-traveled bottles of wine in excellent condition - and I'm happy to have my etched bottle safe at home...

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