Creeping respectability is a funny thing. For years while hitchhiking around North and Central America with a backpack and a ponytail, I often was greeted with suspicion and wariness, particularly by official types.
Ten years as a lawyer, a haircut and a significantly receding hairline have changed all that. Customs agents who made me take off my clothes for a strip search in 1979 now wave me through without a second glance.
Without realizing it, I`d grown accustomed to a fairly civilized level of treatment. But that was before I took my bicycle to Europe.
Handing the average airline clerk a smoking, ticking time bomb and simply saying, ”I`d like to check this” could not have been much harder than taking a bicycle as checked baggage. Forget about normal standards of service: When you roll up to the departure gate with a bicycle, all bets are off.
My wife, Susan, and I spent our honeymoon touring Ireland and Scotland by bicycle last fall.
We flew from Portland, Ore., to Ireland with our bikes without incident. After three wonderful weeks pedaling around southwest Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, we even got our bikes back to London with a minimum of torture.
The real trouble started when we tried to fly home.
Rules differ
We were flying on Aer Lingus from London to New York, and from there on Trans World Airlines to Portland. Recalling that TWA insisted that bicycles be boxed, while Aer Lingus demanded that they be put in silly plastic bags, I wanted to avoid a conflict between the two airlines` baggage rules.
I called the Aer Lingus London office the day before our departure to ask how the bicycles should be prepared. Someone checked with a supervisor and gave me the final word: They should be placed in the plastic bags. TWA would accept them as transfer baggage from Aer Lingus in that fashion. The bags would be available free of charge at the Aer Lingus counter at Heathrow.
The next morning I walked up to the counter proudly, our bikes partly disassembled to Aer Lingus`s specifications.
”Just take them completely apart and put them up here,” the ticket agent said.
”Wait a minute,” I asked, ”what about the plastic bags?”
”We don`t have any,” she replied.
”But an Aer Lingus supervisor specifically told me that the bicycles should be bagged, not boxed, and that the bags would be waiting at the counter,” I whined. ”What am I going to do now?”
”Just take them completely apart and put them up here,” she insisted.
A final effort
I tried one last time: ”What you`re telling me, then, is that there are no bags, there will be no bags, and if TWA won`t accept my bikes in pieces in New York, or if they get destroyed on the way, it`s just basically my tough luck?”
Thoughtfully, she replied, ”You`re not getting any bags because there are no bags.”
I gave up. I handed her the disassembled bikes. She took our tickets and gave us our passes without another word.
Off to New York and Kennedy International Airport. This was the moment I had been dreading most. I`m from the New York area; I know what goes on there. I`d be lucky if my bicycles didn`t wind up at a pawn shop in the Bronx. We collected our dismembered bicycles and proceeded through customs.
Miraculously, there seemed to be no damage.
We stood in line waiting to check our pieces back into the domestic baggage system for the return trip to Portland. An apparently seasoned employee was breaking in a new hire. The only words the veteran baggage handler offered when I showed up with my numerous unpackaged pieces of bicycle were unprintable.
Ignoring me completely, he told the new hire what rules applied: ”If it has a tag, we have to take it.”
We flew home, wondering if we would ever see our bicycles again and, if so, what they might look like. The answer came in Portland, when it took two men to carry the pieces of my bicycle out to the baggage claim area. While Susan`s bike had survived somehow, mine was destroyed.
A vendetta is born
”Somebody`s gonna pay for this,” I vowed. Although it was midnight in Portland and we had been traveling for more than 24 hours, I was determined not to leave the airport without a damage claim receipt in my hand.
”You can`t file a damage claim at all,” said the TWA agent at the Portland airport, ”The bicycle was not packed to our specifications, so we`re not responsible. Talk to Aer Lingus.”
”Do you mean that the damage claim forms are there under the counter, but you refuse to even hand me one?” I asked.
”That`s right,” she said.
My protests got me nowhere.
”Call Aer Lingus tomorrow,” she repeated. ”You shouldn`t have any problem.”
”You`ll have to talk to TWA,” said the Aer Lingus representative who answered the phone the next morning. ”We won`t accept a damage claim because it`s clearly their responsibility.”
I got my call transferred to a supervisor. He confirmed that Aer Lingus refused to process a damage claim. What I needed to do was to stop bothering Aer Lingus and get back in touch with TWA.
Now, although I was raised in New Jersey, 15 years in Oregon have mellowed me considerably. But I had been pushed too far.
”I don`t need to do anything,” I shrieked. ”Let me tell you what`s going to happen. I`m not going to spend another second talking to you people. You are going to call TWA, the two of you are going to get together and figure this thing out and somebody`s going to call me back and tell me who`s paying for my bike.”
A question of ethics
Ordinarily, I strongly disapprove of lawyers who attempt to flaunt their profession and access to the courts in their personal lives, and I have a personal rule against doing that sort of thing. But every rule has its exception.
”Let me tell you what I`m going to do if this isn`t taken care of,” I bellowed. ”I`m going to sue Aer Lingus and TWA, right here in Portland. I`m going to demand a jury of my peers. I`ve handled a few jury trials in this town, and I can tell you that chances are there will not be one airline executive on that jury.
”I`m going to put one person from each airline on the stand to say that it`s clearly not their fault, that the other airline is responsible. Then I`m going to show the jury my melted bicycle. I`m going to tell them about the missing plastic bags and the insolent baggage clerks.
”I`m going to tell the jury that one of these miserable corporations destroyed my bike, and one or both of them are going to have to pay. Now, you`re a reasonably intelligent person. Just what do you think 12 Oregonians off the street who`ve probably been abused by big out-of-state corporations all their lives are going to think about this situation?”
He was somewhat taken aback. I felt good. I was finally on my home court. In the end the shaken Aer Lingus supervisor took care of everything. Some TWA higher-ups agreed to pay for my bicycle repairs. It all turned out fine.
People ask me if these headaches were worth it. The answer is, surprisingly, yes. The hassles were a small price to pay for the privilege of tooling about the Irish and Scottish countryside by ourselves, far from tour guides and crowds.
The next time we travel we`ll probably schlep our bicycles around just as we did the last time. We even encourage our friends and acquaintances to do the same. Just don`t count on the plastic bags.
