In Search of Luggage

What does BA stand for? Baggage Answering-machine? Baggage Astray? I think so, as I arrived in San Francisco without my suitcase. Flight to here was re-routed via Denver which was enjoying some terrible thunderstorms on Friday. "Do not worry, teams of people are working on your re-booking" was the story in Heathrow as I moved from terminal 4 to Terminal 1 and back again. (The initial BA flight from Amsterdam was delayed by 2 hours because there was one to many suitcases on board). Arrived 7 hours late in SFO to find no-one from BA. United helped me out in the end. BA baggage wanted a 10 figure baggage number (my baggage had an 8 figure label) before they would even answer the phone - absolutely useless. United has a voice response system called Steve, who found my baggage by Sunday morning. I thought Air France was bad - but discovered BA is worse.

But it did give an excuse to wander round Frys in Palo Alto - in theory I was looking for a battery charger. I see that large screen TVs are being pushed as High Definition - when in fact they are only HD ready. No-one could demo me a HD picture. US is indeed way ahead when it comes to useful Wi-Fi gadgets, but seems to have given up already on Bluetooth (probably too slow). The hotel (in fact all the hotels) have free Wireless ADSL access. No wonder they get cross when hotels in Amsterdam want to charge you 40 dollars A DAY to get a similar service.