…why I was too tired to post yesterday, but seem to have recovered today. The short answer is simple, S L E E P !

I slept last night. For the first time in three nights.

You see, I suffer from Sleep Apnea. (I’ll let you click on the link for more information.) It seems to be a common problem for the Kinnon family (my sibling and father, at least). I have a CPAP machine that helps compensate for the problem – and with it, I sleep very well, thank you. Without it…

We flew back from Boise on Thursday – checking two of our bags through Minneapolis on to Toronto. Northworst…forgive me, Northwest assured us the bags would have no problem making the short (60 minute) layover transfer from plane to plane. They were half right. The smaller of the two bags made it. The one with the CPAP, hard drive, video tapes shot @ the conference, clothes and tripod base was lost.

I stood @ the carousel in Toronto’s Terminal 3 for an hour Thursday night, in vain hope that the bag would show. Bags kept coming off the conveyor (the carousel was being shared with three other flights) but mine wasn’t one of them. I finally went to the Northwest Baggage counter. "Oh, we’re sorry Mr. Kinnon, we had a report that your bag hadn’t made it on the flight. But they can be wrong occasionally. Maybe I should have paged you. But I figured we’d see you if you didn’t find your bag." Such customer service.

I was assured the bag would arrive on the next flight in – Friday afternoon @ 2pm. They’d bring it up to the marina that serves our island. But Northwest couldn’t find the bag. (I’d had a dream Friday morning, in my few moments of actual sleep that when I’d opened the bag, the hard drive, tapes and CPAP were missing. And, yes, I readily admit I was stupid not to carry those things on.) I called throughout the day, after finally tracking down Northwest’s Baggage office @ Pearson.

My first call was picked up by a very helpful employee. He called me back within the hour to tell me they coudn’t find my bag – not quite helpful enough. The rest of my calls (x4) were greated by voicemail. At midnight on Friday, Imbi answered the phone to hear they’d found my bag. Would someone be at the marina around 1:30am to recieve it. "Ahh, no!" "OK. It will be there by 10am." Saturday at 9am we recieved another call, "We’ll have the bag to you by 6pm." I climbed into the hammock by the lake and proceeded to scare animals and small children with my desperate snoring. The bag got to our dock @ 4:30pm – with everthing inside – although, it HAD been repacked. (Security did a better job of packing than I had originally – and the bag had been locked.)

And last night, I slept.

Now, how will Northwest be compensating me for the inconvenience of two nights without sleep, I wonder?

Tags: lost bag, Northworst, Northwest, NWA, CPAP, sleep apnea. lost sleep