Places never to put your bag (hint: it’s not in Detroit)

Today, went on a photoshoot for the 747. It was a mad dash of crazy photo taking as quick as we could, as many images as is possible while the airplane was on the ground for a mere hour and a half during a turn from/to Tokyo’s Narita airport. For those of you who have not done a photoshoot of an aircraft before, an hour and a half is almost no time at all.  A little blink of the eye.  It was hectic.  My shutter finger literally fell off my hand, such was the strain of so much picture taking condensed into so short a time.  (I managed to sew it back on)

In our haste to get started, I asked our handler (you can’t just wander willy nilly around the ramp without a badged escort, so I had “a guy”) if I could put my bag down by the jetway stairs. “Yeah, no problem,” he told me. I left it, with an extra camera (cheepy, $90 mini thing, but handy), my long lens for the Nikon, sunglasses, hat, mints (!), and some contents of my wallet (fortuitously, I am the kind of person who hates wallets. So I bring mine with me sometimes, but usually in the bag; my id/credit card/cash stays in my pocket) all cozily inside. Went about the exterior photoshoot, came back around the aircraft, and my bag was no more. We asked some of the rampers about it, but they mostly scratched their heads and looked utterly unsympathetic while I watched them load almost a dozen pet carriers filled with cats.  Who takes their cats with them when they travel to Tokyo?  Why are rampers such complete douches?  These are questions that need answering.

I do want to stress a point, if I may, and it is this: the very same people that have intimate access to enormous aircraft carrying hundreds of people into the air – the fuelers and handlers and groomers and turdburglars (lav emptiers), etc. –  are also the kinds of people that don’t think twice about snatching up an unattended bag when the opportunity presents itself. Grr.

Most sad of all: I had a sweet little 3rd grade picture of Jen in there. Maybe she has more for me; I can trade her for this lame shot of me and the tender underbelly of an astonishingly large aircraft.

Me in happier times, when my bag was still mine, and I had mints and a wallet. Sigh.