Lost Bag - Day 5

We flew Southwest Airlines from Seattle with a stop in Denver then on to Greenville, N.C.  Mike and I choose this airline because they are the only airline that allows you to check up to two 50lb. bags of oversized luggage each!  This was great since we are moving onto a boat and the more we bring with us, the less we'll have to buy on the East coast.  So, we packed our bags full and tight.  They weighed 50, 50.5, 48 and 44 pounds, exactly!!  We weighed them several times on a scale to make sure and we fought over a few of the items that we'd get to bring with us!  It's tuff moving out of a two bedroom 1000 square-foot house to 4 bags of luggage.  Then we added around a 40 lb. carry on suitcase our cat Nelly and 2 personal items, which were at least 10 lbs. adding up to almost 300 lbs. of luggage and this was 300 lbs. of our most expensive electronics, clothes, shoes, kitchen supplies and anything else you can imagine bringing along with you for a year living on a  32 ft. sailboat with one other person.....is this starting to sound like living on a deserted island and what one item would you bring along?!?

Once we arrived in Greenville, we met Mike's aunt and uncle who kindly picked us up at the airport and drove us out to their place in Asheville, N.C.  While we were waiting at baggage claim to gather all our 300 lbs. of luggage, we discovered that our 4th bag was missing.  I've never lost a bag on the airline before, ugh, I thought, "what are we going to do now?" and "is the cost of our bag going to be covered?" and "we don't have an address anymore for our bag to be sent to in case it is found!".

Luckily, the lady working at Southwest was very helpful and started a lost baggage report for us.  She asked us what identifying items we had in the bag to identify it if it turned up.  I said "clothes", duh, what kind of response is that??  But actually this was the bag that had ALL our clothes in it.....that is ALL MY CLOTHES!  Crap.  Luckily i have a couple items in another bag, but we are moving for a year onto a boat and I have practically NO CLOTHES besides my Helly Hansen foul weather gear from the Chehalis outlet!!

Today is day 5, this is an important day for people who have had their luggage lost on an airline.  This is the day you can fill out a Lost Baggage Report!  Well, I received a call today that an unidentified bag has been found in Denver with some of the items I had described and that they would be shipping it to Charleston tonight.  Looks like I'm going to be waiting one more day before that lost baggage report.  Hopefully my bag will be returned before we leave the Charleston marina, which is now scheduled for tuesday.  On a good note, we did do some research and discovered that Southwest covers up to $3,300 in lost baggage replacement costs!  I'm thinking to myself now, "I wouldn't mind sacrificing all my clothes for $3,300!".