The casualties of travel

We have lost and broken a few things along our 10,000 miles we’ve traveled…nothing major, but I’ll list them here for posterity.

  • My hat – I have 2 stocking caps to keep my bald head warm.  I’m sure I packed them both but since day 1 I’ve only been able to find one.  I’ve done just fine with a single hat but it still bugs me that I don’t have a clue where it could have gone.
  • Louisiana State Park patch – The kids all earned their Jr Ranger patches for the state of Louisiana, but somehow we misplaced Brielle’s.  We’re sure it made it into the 5th wheel and there is no reason it would have been taken out.  So it may still turn up but we haven’t found it yet and our house isn’t that big.
  • My Sacagawea dollar – The first couple Sacagawea dollars I came across back in 2000 were placed in my pocket with the intention of never spending them.  My dad has a silver dollar that he has kept in his pocket for several decades.  It is worn smooth as a baby’s butt…you can hardly make out the coin markings.  I figured I’d do the same with my Sacagaweas.  Well, its a good thing I kept 2 because I lost one of them on the Forbidden Journey ride in Harry Potter world.
  • Steph’s phone screen – I see a lot of people using smart phones with cracked screens but of all the devices we’ve had we’ve never had a cracked screen….until now.  Steph’s phone got dropped and it did quite a doozy on the screen.  It still works and is usable, but it’s definitely annoying.  Anyone ever change the screen on a MotoX 2nd gen?
  • My pocket knife – Ok, this one has the most interesting story I think!  First, the backstory.  Back in 2002 I was traveling to China quite a bit for work.  On one of my trips to China I forgot to leave my pocket knife at home and I had to surrender it at security.  It was just one of those mini swiss army knives with blade, file, scissors, toothpick and tweezers but this was not too long after 9/11 so they were strict.  On this particular trip to China Steph came over to visit me and then we took some time to travel a bit.  On our way through Hong Kong on our way home I found a mini swiss army knife in the window well of a restaurant.  I was able to put it in my checked luggage and have had the thing ever since.  Now, the front story.  We were taking a tour of the Capitol building in DC.  All week I’d been reminding myself to NOT take my knife with me that day.  Well, we show up at the Senate office building and there is a security gate.  I place my pocket contents in the dish sure that they will confiscate the knife….but they don’t!  Must be because it’s so dinky I figure.  We meet our tour guide in Senator Gardner’s office and head over to the Capitol.  Once again I must go through a security check.  Once again I place my knife in the dish.  And once again they hand me the dish to put the contents back in my pocket.  We have a very enjoyable tour and then we have some time on our own to visit the senate and house galleries.  For these you must stash all electronic devices with security before you can enter.  So I leave phone and camera with them.  We take the long walk to the gallery and come upon yet one more security check point.  Instead of repeating my actions at the previous two checkpoints I decide to stash my knife in an inconspicuous location, proceed through security then retrieve knife upon exit (typing it out just now does not sound too bright…but for some reason it made sense at the time).  We go in and watch some senate action.  It was mostly enjoyable but I started thinking…”what if they find the knife?  And they run the video surveillance tapes?  And they see it was me?”  Every time the gallery doors were opened by security to let more visitors in my heart skipped thinking they would come in and arrest me.  But they never did.  Alright, we’re going to pull this off after all!  We walk past security and I can see my knife is still where I left it…it’s then I realize that my placement of the knife was not easily accessible when exiting.  I thought, “I don’t want to leave it there.  What if they find the knife?  And they run the video surveillance tapes?  And they see it was me?”.  So I work my way around the security ropes, pick up the knife and continue my exit when a security guard stops me….”oh $#!7″.  I explain to him what I had done and admitted that it was pretty dumb.  His boss said to him “You’ll have to do a p368 on him and escort him out of the building”.  So the officer gets my ID, calls in the P368 (I actually don’t remember the code) giving them all my details and apparently the results come back clean.  “But I still have to fill out this form and file it….it won’t go on your record or anything” he tells me.  He was very nice about it.  I felt like a total dork fish.  He then gives me the option to keep the knife and be escorted out of the building or surrender the knife.  As the title of this post suggest, I surrendered the knife.  He said “are you sure?  How long have you had this knife?”.  I told him I was sure…its a $10 knife that was missing the tweezers.  So, I’ll probably never be able to run for office of any sort since I have a P368 on file at our nation’s capitol.

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