Have you really been there?
Have you really been there?
Plus baggage delays with Air Canada
A common question among frequent travelers is how you define having "been" to a place.
It’s something I’ve discussed with friends and Twitter followers recently. I got a wide range of answers:
Stepping foot on the ground, including at airports.
Having left the airport, including at connecting airports.
Eating a meal.
Visting an attraction.
Spending the night.
Thankfully, no one I know claimed that flying over a place counted as having been there.
My own definition is leaving the airport and having something to eat. Just connecting at an airport doesn't count. If I counted those, I would have also been to Bogota, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Kuwait City, Bogota, Panama City and San Salvador.
Houston counts because I left the airport to have coffee with Rakesh Agrawal.
This becomes a more “important” discussion when you’re talking about visiting all 50 states. Does having driven through a state count? I count Delaware because I stopped at a service plaza and ate while on the drive on I-95 from Washington, D.C., to New York.
In December, I went on a road-trip where I covered four states in 36 hours: Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. I couldn’t care less about visiting all 50 states, but my spouse does. This trip was optimized to check the boxes. We just nicked Kansas. We had a purpose though: visiting the CW Parker Carousel Museum.
Iowa, on the other hand, was a technicality of a technicality.
Carter Lake, Iowa, is a city that is on the mostly Nebraska side of the Missouri River, but still part of Iowa. (This happened because of a shift in the Missouri River during a flood. In 1892, the Supreme Court ruled that the land was still a part of Iowa.)
The second technicality is the definition of “eating a meal.” Normally I don’t visit chains when I travel, but the only resturant open in Carter Lake was a Perkins. My meal was a chocolate brownie.
I also stood on the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian bridge, straddling Nebraska and Iowa. That alone wouldn’t count by my definition.
What’s your definition?
(post continues after photo)
Baggage delay compensation on Air Canada
On my recent trip to Australia and Fiji, our bags were 8,000 miles behind us.
I keep AirTags in my luggage so that I know where it is. Upon landing at Sydney, I could see that my bag was still in Vancouver. Instead of waiting 45 minutes at the carousel to find out that my bag didn’t arrive, I went straight to the baggage service desk to file my claim.
With few flights between Vancouver and Sydney, our bags wouldn’t make it until at least the next day. (They ended up being two days late.)
I wasn’t prepared for 90 degrees and sun, so we went shopping: shorts, underwear, shirts, hats and sunglasses. If you see me wearing a bright orange Taronga Zoo shirt, that’s why.
The contracted baggage service desk couldn’t provide any guidance on what Air Canada would cover.
Fortunately - assuming Air Canada sends the promised check - they will have covered our expenses, including a pair of Ray-Bans.
We also have coverage for baggage delay through my Ritz-Carlton credit card, but that didn’t come into play here.