gifts, schmifts

Yeah, yeah. So I failed at blogging again. So sue me.

Anyway, here's the final word on that story about my luggage. It did finally get to me, despite copious amounts of volcanic ash -- or so I've been led to believe.

But as you can see from the photo, not everything arrived fully in-tact. That there's my bag -- sans clothes -- with remnants of a busted bottle of Piraat beer. It was part of a set of 6 assorted Belgian beers that were a gift for Hideaki.

The circumstances behind the breakage are pretty strange, and based on the available forensics, I actually don't suspect the Delta baggage handlers. It's clear that the bottles actually fell out of the bag. There were scrapes all over the labels and the caps. And you know how much pressure it takes to break a beer bottle? Just as a ballpark figure, I'd say, "a lot." No way you could generate that kind of pressure -- deep inside my clothing-stuffed bag, no less -- without doing some serious damage to the bag itself. On top of that, though there was certainly beer and glass all over the inside of my luggage, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expect for roughly 12 oz. of pressurized beverage. Also factor in one other thing: if you were a baggage handler and you heard that crunch-fizz of a bottle breaking in my bag, would you stop to open up the bag and try to do damage control, accidentally dropping the other bottles on the tarmac in the process, or would you just say "screw it" and keep loading up the plane? If you said yes to the former, here's my advice to you: don't become an airline baggage handler.

So, add it all up, and this was either 1) TSA or b) Japanese customs. And, of course, anyone who knows me knows which one I'm inclined to blame...