Team USA and Team Canada – This is why I keep traveling!

Remember how I was all braggy about getting to fly First Class to Worlds? Well, I should have made sure I made it fully intact before I started acting like Angelina Jolie.

First Class seats, or rather “Pods”, are basically designed to be your own private space ship. Essentially, it appears the goal is to never have to interact with another traveler during your journey, ever. Even if you want to, because apparently, two of the singers from Styx don’t want to “chat it up” while flying. Not that I would know, or anything.

One of the “amenities” of First Class, in addition to a pair of slippers, a tube of lip balm and a pair of ear plugs (because rich people seem to snore a lot) is your own personal “‘laptop drawer” whose sole purpose is to, yes, hold your laptop. It sits unobtrusively on the side, tucked neatly away from your bed, your stinky feet, and your reach when you are strapped into your seat.

Clearly the inventors of First Class assumed that everyone flying it would be doing so because they were smart enough to make enough money to pay $7000 for a one-way ticket in a personal pod. The designers obviously never envisioned those of us who were only hitching a ride on airline points, and thus, not to be trusted to use such things as a laptop drawer appropriately.

Basically, what this means is that I left my laptop and iPad on the plane. But only for about 32 seconds. Then I realized it and tried to turn around to go back and get it, but was stopped. Apparently, once you exit a plane you are NEVER allowed back on for any reason. I was told I had to go down to British Airways Customer Service and someone would bring my laptop to me.

But that never happened.

Over and over I checked, for four hours, but my laptop bag had disappeared from the laptop drawer.

So, I spent the next two days contacting everyone I could think of to change passwords, stop connection, etc. just in case my laptop was now in the hands of some sort of international hackapalooza ring.

The only thing that gives me comfort (in the weirdest sort of way) is that everything I have ever written is on that laptop (not backed up, of course, because that would be something a RESPONSIBLE adult-like person would do), so the possible-hackers will have to sift through a whole bunch of Word Documents about running and crying and cupcakes. Serves them right. If they did take my laptop and it’s not just sitting forlornly in Lost and Found and the people from Heathrow will not respond to my inquiries even though I’m over here desperate and frantic and having to type on an iPad that clearly hates me and makes me want to throw things across the room because it keeps freezing every 5 seconds and it’s taking me 3 hours to write one blog post about how incompetent I am, then I hope the Hacksters’ boss makes them read every single word! Then we might just be even.

So, if you have stolen my laptop, and have now hacked into it and are reading this, isn’t it clear that I am already demented enough without having to lose my cherished computer and try to type on an iPad? Can’t we agree that we’ve both suffered enough and that no good will come from you having to read one more word about long runs that inevitably devolve into a pukefest or another incident of inappropriate moob management?

Please, send my computer home.

And if you just so happen to be a runner,

Happy Running! 

Tagged as: First Class, hacking, laptop