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WisCon, Part One: Air Canada ate my Palm Pilot
This past weekend, I went to WisCon. In short, it was a great weekend, but the flight was terrible. Speaking as a former Air Canada enthusiast, I am growing less and less fond of that airline.
I was carrying a set of small tools with me; jeweller's tools that I was taking to drop off with someone who could return them to Borden. I know that the last time Borden came to visit me in Toronto, some of her tools had to be surrendered, and so I made a point of checking in my bag, even though I usually just pack a carry-on.
When you travel to the States from Toronto Pearson airport, first you check in, then you carry your baggage through U.S. customs (so many people travel from Toronto to the States that the U.S. maintains a customs house in the Toronto airport), then you drop off your checked baggage on a conveyor belt, and then you pass through the security checkpoint.
I've done a lot of travel (both business and personal), and I usually breeze through. I always travel with my passport -- I keep it easily available. I make sure that my forms are filled out before getting in the various lines for US customs. And before I go to the security checkpoint, I make sure that all my coins and keys are out of my pockets and in my purse -- I almost never set off the metal detectors. The only thing that's slowed me down lately, is the fact that my purse has a lot of loose change in it, and that makes part of my purse opaque when it goes through the X-ray machine.
So there I was, waiting and waiting and waiting for people in front of me to go through the security checkpoint. One after another, they set off the metal detector: "Oh... when the security guard asked me if I was carrying any change or keys, I forgot that I was carrying change and keys."
Then it was my turn: "Do you have any electronic devices?" the guard asked. I was about to answer "no", when I realized that I had my Palm V in my purse. I don't use it much, and the battery has actually been run down for months. "Yeah," I said, and plonked the Palm into one of the X-ray baskets.
On the other side of the metal detector (which didn't go off, says I smugly) I watched my stuff come through the X-ray machine. One of the guards tried to turn on the Palm.
"The battery is dead," I said.
"It has to work," said the guard.
"Excuse me?"
Apparently, I can't take a PDA on board an airplane unless it works (but don't try to use it while the plane is taking off).
"So, uh, how do we handle this?" I asked.
"You have to check it in."
She sent me back to the baggage area. I waited for a long time while a person with damaged luggage quibbled about wanting to file a report in Florida rather than San Diego. I told the baggage clerk that I'd been told to check the Palm V.
"Do you have a suitcase that you can put it in?"
"No. I've already checked that, and put it on the conveyor belt."
"We can't just check in a small item like that."
"So what do we do in this situation?"
She thought about this. Me, I thought, Oh, come on... I can't have been the first person to have run into this!
"You can leave it here, and when you come back, you can pick it up in Lost and Found," she said.
"What are the hours of Lost and Found?" I asked. My return flight was due back at 11:30 PM.
She took a long time to try to find this information. "8 AM to 10 PM," she told me.
"Ah," I said. "So it will be closed when I get back, then."
I left my Palm V with the Air Canada baggage clerk, and went back to security. I waited and waited and waited as countless people went through the security check point, set off the metal detectors, and only then realized that they were still carrying their keys. (Can't airport security have an express line for smart people?)
On my way back to Toronto on Monday, I managed to get on a slightly earlier flight. I arrived back at Toronto Pearson around 9 PM and showed up at Lost and Found before closing time. I discovered two new facts:
- Lost and Found only keeps items at that location for 7 days. If I'd waited too long to come and pick up my Palm, they'd have sent it to a big warehouse in Montreal.
- They didn't have my Palm V.
PDA in Space
Arrggh!