Airport Adventures...Traveling with Una Bomba

I spent yesterday traveling from the boat to the States to attend my sister's wedding event in San Francisco. I'm so excited to be here, but it took one of THOSE days to do it. 

As we came through security in Puerto Vallarta, the Mexican equivalent to a TSA agent looked at my bag for quite awhile on the monitor and then called over a higher-up. I knew they were looking at the boat's water pump in my suitcase that had quit on us last week. I was bringing it with me because it was under warranty and we were going to exchange it once we got to Seattle.

Our non-functioning water pump in transit.

Well, no wonder they wanted a closer look at it, I mean look at the picture! So, in my very best Spanish I begin explaining that it is a pump. "Es una bomba" At that, he looked at me with some concern, and no wonder since the Spanish word for pump and bomb are the same 'bomba'. Ooops, I realized that mistake too late - So I back tracked and quickly explained that it moves fresh water through the boat. He smelled it for gasoline and I pointed out that there was no fuel involved, it runs purely on electricity.  He then picked it up and said it was too heavy to carry on board....um that's not a rule. He said I couldn't take it in my carryon. I could check my luggage if I wanted. I didn't want. He told me I might hit someone with it. Perhaps, but it's still not a rule. My backpack is heavy and I can still carry that. He finally called over the woman who uses the wipes to check for bomb/chemical residue. She wiped it down and confirmed that there were no dangerous chemicals and told him to let me take it through. Whew, only a few more TSAs until to Seattle.

Then...
Our direct flight became full, and delayed, so we decided to fly to San Francisco through Los Angeles. Not ideal, but we got first class seats so things were looking up. (We fly stand by, so we only get on a plane if there are extra seats). When we landed, because we were in first class, we were among the first off the plane. We zipped through Customs because we have Global Entry, printed off new boarding passes, flew threw TSA precheck, grabbed our bags again and back into the LAX airport in record time. I was super excited because we were now going to make a 6:30 flight to SFO instead of waiting until 8:30. They were boarding the 6:30 flight and the agent asked us to wait just a minute and she would get us on. Awesome!

Then my phone rang....

"Mam you left your suitcase on the airplane in the international terminal." No, I didn't, I'm pulling my black-looks-like-everyone-else's-suitcase behind me. Yeah, I had Lalo Navarro's suitcase. I don't know Lalo, but I had watched him separate my and Jack's suitcases and put his own between them in the overhead compartment when he boarded. I took note of it, and promptly forgot (or enjoyed the perks of first class too much). I had hauled Mr. Navarro's things out of customs and back into Terminal 2's TSA. Needless to say, I booked it back out of security (again), hoping I hadn't delayed a next flight for poor Sr. Navarro. I handed it to him at baggage claim with a dozen 'lo sientos' (I'm sorries) and learned that he didn't have any other flight to catch. I, however, did. We had missed the 6:30 flight and now the 7:30 was delayed until 9:30 (and the 8:30 flight was delayed until at least 10 pm). So I sat around scolding myself for a few more hours.

We made it to San Francisco without too much more of a struggle and we are very happy to be here. I will be tying a bright colored ribbon to my suitcase and hopefully won't have to explain to another TSA agent why I have a bomba in my suitcase!

FYI - bomba in Spanish can also mean: pump, bomb, bombshell, thunderbolt, crackerjack, and candlebomb

Just in case you needed to know!