How do you lose luggage between Freddy Beach and Montreal?

Yup! Only Air Canada could do it. You get on a flight in Fredericton for Montreal, no stops, and arrive to no luggage. Nada. One person on our team travelling for work purposes got her suitcase. That's the only one that came out onto the conveyor belt and I mean the only one. But the story doesn't end there.

We go to the Air Canada desk after chatting and waiting half an hour, and they said, nope, your luggage isn't here. SO it has to be back in Freddy Beach unless they just whimsically decided to put it on another flight to heaven-knows-where. We're in the cab on the way to check into the hotel and I suddenly realize I only have medication for that evening, the rest is packed. Not a good situation when you are diabetic and have high blood pressure. Now I NEVER do that but I took more with me than usual since I wasn't sure how the weather would go. It seemed easier than trying to stash it all in my purse. It was an easy check in at the hotel with just the clothes on your back. Then we decided to go to the bar/restaurant.

Might I back track here to say that I've been doing press approval for the New Brunswick Vacation Planner for nine years now and for the past three or four we've stayed at the same hotel which I THOUGHT was named the Delta Centreville. So did the two other colleagues who "lost" their luggage. The only one who knew it was the Delta Montreal was the person who got their suitcase so she wasn't at the counter with us when we told Air Canada where to deliver our wayward bags.

Now we realized we had TWO problems, my lack of meds and the fact we told them the wrong hotel. We ask at the front desk if they can call over to the other Delta and ask them to have the bags forwarded to our actual location. Now despite both being Deltas they have different owners so no can do. Our only option is to call the airline's 1-800 number to make the change. We sit down in the bar and my colleague calls on his blackberry. Hello, India, Pakistan who knows.

The guy has trouble understanding our foreign accents and asks him to spell everything after he tries to explain our dilemma. It was better than the old Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on first?" After talking to each of us MULTIPLE times, putting us all on hold MULTIPLE times, asking the same confirmation questions MULTIPLE times, we had a two-hour phone call to change one field on this guy's computer. He blames the person at the desk at Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport. We didnt' know whether to laugh, cry or get drunk especially when he told us at the end, just before hanging up, that we could have done this online. We did a little of the first ironically and avoided the other two options.

We hoped the luggage would be on a later flight from Freddy Beach but nope... we went to the drugstore around the corner and bought basic toiletries (AC allows you $50 US - I spent $20 Can). What was I thinking? The team tried to talk me into ordering new meds but I was confident my suitcase would arrive the next morning. One of my colleague's husband works at the Fredericton Airport and he checked the next a.m. - no luggage laying around so we believed it would arrive soon.

Come late afternoon all we could find out on the website that our bags were in Montreal but we didn't know where. Hadn't arrived at our hotel and weren't at the other either. So I called my loving hubby to call our pharmacy and make arrangements for me to get my prescriptions. I have to say that after all the red tape and frustration, that transaction went off without a hitch!!! Even my Blue Cross kicked in even though they weren't sure it would. Three cheers for Ross Drug and Pharmaprix. You both were fantastic!

Of course, when I got back to the hotel the concierge was smiling and waving that our luggage arrived. Murphy's Law is having an anniversary this year after all, so I guess I broke it in for 2009!

BTW, when we arrived home late last night, everyone's luggage came around on the conveyor belt. It's good to be home!