You Never Know When...

O.K., so Holland America lost my luggage between ship and Anchorage Airport. A few phone calls later and they have found it and promise to ship it Fed Ex to my office. Subsequently I get a phone call from Fed Ex explaining that while they will customs clear commercial shipping, they won't do so with luggage and I have to come to Fed Ex, get a paper, take it to customs, get them to stamp said paper, and then return to Fed Ex to actually pick up the luggage.

I'm driving to the far side of town, getting a bit lost on the way to Fed Ex (I know it's somewhere round the airport, but that's probably 4 square miles and of course you can't cut across the middle). On the way I discover parts of the city I have never seen previously and discover this large excavation - without any barriers to access. I don't have my camera with me, but guess what - if I can get my luggage, the FZ50 is in it.

Right - I'm at Fed Ex and not only do I have to go to customs, they may not want to see me, being Saturday and busy with flights. I might even have to go downtown during a weekday - this is getting worse and worse. Fortunately the Fed Ex lady points out that basically I'm asking Customs to do me a favour, and with that in mind, I drive to the airport and beg very nicely for said favour and out comes a nice lady who without asking anything takes her magic stamp, thumps all four copies of the document I picked up at Fed Ex, and voila, I'm done.

So back to Fed Ex, pick up luggage and back to the hole in the ground. I have my good tripod but don't have an arca swiss plate for my FZ50 so I hand hold. The horizontal image is a series of 5 images stitched in PTGui.

A nightmare trip turned out to be fun after all.