Not as exciting as yesterday's post

But here is the follow on...

The flight to Cairo went by quickly. I slept about two thirds the flight and stayed occupied the other third by watching the Greek islands slip by one at a time beneath the airplane. Night came as we crossed over Alexandria and into Africa. Shortly thereafter, we landed in Cairo.

Egypt is one of the few countries I travel to that requires a visa. It’s only $15, but you have to stand in line to buy it at the airport. Then you wait in line for passport control. By the time I cleared passport control, my travel day was stretching to nearly 20 hours. Not too bad, but long enough that I was eager to get to the hotel and pack for the competition the next morning. This is where my luck started to run out.

As I mentioned earlier, I just made it to Premier Executive on United. There are a number of perks associated with this that are supposed to make travel a little nicer and keep you loyal to your most frequent airline. One of the perks is priority luggage. Not only do ticketing agents stop hassling you about overweight luggage, your bags also typically come out first or near the front on the carousel. So when my bags did not come out shortly after the baggage started, I knew there was probably a problem. Once the final bag came out, I realized my bags probably didn’t make the Denver to Frankfurt connection. My lucky streak came screeching to a halt as I started to think of the chances that my bags, full of the equipment I needed to compete, would come in that night.

The line for the lost luggage was only about 4 people long, but it still seemed to take forever. I had to wait for a guy who was very upset about some discoloration on his brand new suitcase (clearly not a frequent flier if he still is under the delusion that luggage ever looks good after its maiden voyage). Then there was the lady who had hard cased suitcases, one of which had been crushed before being returned to her. Then the American professor who lives in Cairo who also arrived empty handed. Finally I had my turn.

In the 21st century, you would expect that computer systems would instantly track luggage and know where it is en rout to the final destination. Surprisingly nearly 30 minutes of computer searches and phone calls by the luggage agent yielded absolutely nothing. I had my Blackberry with me and let Cami know what was going on in real time. She tried calling United at the same time and was told that all they knew was that my bags made it to Denver. That news was nearly 24 hours old to me. I was curious what continent they were on and if we would be reunited before the competition. I knew several other flight schedules that my bags could have taken which would land them in Cairo that night. The easiest was if they caught the flight from Denver to London several hours after the Frankfurt flight and then from London to Cairo. There was also a rout through Chicago that would have put them into Cairo the middle of the following morning. Not ideal, but in time to still have my gun for the shooting (the gun is the hardest piece of equipment to borrow). But the luggage agent came up with nothing and I left customs with only my carryon.

Outside customs, there were throngs of people waiting for passengers. The competition organizers had my itinerary and had agreed to pick me up. As my newfound luck would have it, they were nowhere to be found. With a bit of searching on my Blackberry, I was able to locate the number of the Egyptian Pentathlon Federation and I placed an extremely expensive call. At $2.50 per minute, I was happy that the phone was answered on the first ring by someone who spoke good English. He knew who I was and, after asking about my location, said the person sent to fetch me was in the wrong terminal. Another expensive phone call ten minutes later vectored Usama to me.

Usama is a cop and told me to wait while he checked on my luggage again. I was glad he offered because I thought he would have a better chance finding out where the bags were than I did. An hour later, the Ukrainian team exited customs. They told me Usama was still inside checking on my bags. Another 30 minutes passed and he returned with no more news about the bags. That’s when it really sunk in that I would spend the next day trying to hobble together borrowed equipment, giving me an extreme uphill battle to make the final.

(I'm posting this from the Library in Alexandria. I'll finish the competition blog and have it up when I get back to Cairo tonight.)