Carryon Luggage
March 12, 2020 7:05 AM   Subscribe

 
I'll have to try that knife trick. I've been caught out in the security line too many times.
posted by bonehead at 7:12 AM on March 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


Alright everybody, start checking potted plants in airports for free knives
posted by timdiggerm at 7:32 AM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


I've done a similar pocket knife thing. The hardest part is trying not to look sketchy when you're hiding it. Also, trying not to look sketchy looks sketchy as hell.
posted by hypnogogue at 7:35 AM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


“Are you saying,” I asked, “that my goldfish is pretty much copiloting this flight?”

thanks for posting this.
posted by theora55 at 7:36 AM on March 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


I've safe-dropped knives in the pamphlet bins of rental car kiosks. No one ever looks in there. Even if they take a pamphlet they're not looking at the bottom of the bin.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:00 AM on March 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


All the proof I need that goldfish are qualified to copilot airplanes.

Charming, thank you freshwater!
posted by lepus at 8:04 AM on March 12, 2020


I mean, from a security standpoint, if there's a living goldfish swimming around in the liquids in your allowable 1L ziploc bag, you can be pretty sure the contents isn't dangerous.

Though it's probably best not to mention that to the TSA or they'll require us all to bring goldfish.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:16 AM on March 12, 2020 [12 favorites]


I didn't know about the knife rule when I flew around November of 2001, I think. Security lines weren't long, though, so at the time it was easy enough to go back to my airline check-in and they helped me tape it into the smallest box they had (enormous) and checked the box for me. I don't remember how I got it home, but possibly the same way, but knowing to check my ludicrously large knife box before going through security.

The weirdest thing I've taken in my checked luggage was the family silver my grandma gave me. Even six settings is quite heavy and honestly a bit weird to explain why you need.

Even that wasn't as weird as things I've carried through customs. I don't think I even had a good explanation for why I had a popcorn popper in my tote bag, just, I like popcorn and so Mom sent me home with this.
posted by Margalo Epps at 8:28 AM on March 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


Margalo Epps, your story reminds me that I took the family china as carry-on.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:30 AM on March 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


I was in Newfoundland this past summer. I wish I'd thought to bring home an iceberg (did at least get a chance to touch one).
posted by lharmon at 8:37 AM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Around ten years ago, I took a Roomba from London to Amsterdam in my carry-on. "No, no laptop, but, er..." It elicited amusement.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 9:17 AM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Ah, for the old days of air travel!

A sizeable hand-crafted machete purchased in Toraja, Sulawesi (made from the leaf spring of a truck) accompanied me through the security check point in Jakarta w/o much of a fuss. I got at most a couple of comments that it was 'rather large for me' which I explained was because it was intended as a gift for a much larger friend (which it was).
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:28 AM on March 12, 2020 [4 favorites]


The only item that ever caused trouble for me with the TSA was Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, which I guess showed up as some bizarre unidentifiable object on the scanner. ("Ooooooh, it's a book!")
posted by thomas j wise at 9:47 AM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Back in the 1990s on flight days I used to buy a spinach/garlic or sausage pizza from my old job. I packed the slices into two gallon Zip Loc bags, and tucked it into my backpack next to six or twelve bottles of beer (each in a shite cotton sock to prevent clanking).

It was heavy as hell, and whenever I unzipped the bag to get something, the pizza would release a cloud of garlic-scented steam.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:08 AM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Oh...oh dear...it's carryon luggage, not carrion luggage? There's my problem right there
posted by NoMich at 10:11 AM on March 12, 2020 [8 favorites]


My wayward son: "what?"
posted by Pastor of Muppets at 10:12 AM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Ah, for the old days of air travel!

A sizeable hand-crafted machete purchased in Toraja, Sulawesi (made from the leaf spring of a truck) accompanied me through the security check point in Jakarta w/o much of a fuss.


When I was a kid, I was always insanely jealous of the kids coming back on the plane from Disney carrying enormous fake spears from the shops by the Jungle Cruise. They wouldn't fit in the overhead compartment or under the seats, so those kids just sat at their seats, holding spears (and hitting each other with them). Man I wanted one of those.
posted by Mchelly at 10:38 AM on March 12, 2020 [4 favorites]


I managed to bring a regional European airport to a halt with a rice cooker. It took me 15 minutes to adequately explain what it was to very confused Slavic security people. (They could find no regulation against it, but retaliated by making me strip off to my bra because the button-up shirt was clearly a jacket.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:36 AM on March 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


This was a great story.

The iceberg was melting and a small chunk, a “growler,” floated in to shore. I climbed down a rock face and chopped some off with an axe. A few days later, I was at the Griffin Poetry Prize, in Toronto, with a slab of that iceberg in a cooler. Seamus Heaney was at the bar, and I asked if he wanted any ice in his drink. He put a whole lump in his whiskey.

Ha.

A sizeable hand-crafted machete purchased in Toraja, Sulawesi (made from the leaf spring of a truck)

Let me guess -- one of the perks of being The Person With a Machete on a flight is that nobody is going to put their feet on your armrest.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:35 PM on March 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


Not twice, anyway.
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:11 PM on March 12, 2020 [12 favorites]


gotta be careful you don't accidentally grow a knife tree
posted by poffin boffin at 2:38 PM on March 12, 2020 [5 favorites]


I will just note that you paired a story about carry-on luggage with a video on airport architecture perfectly. Kudos!
posted by Phreesh at 3:34 PM on March 12, 2020


The oddest thing I’ve brought on carryon was a 1938 Singer sewing machine. Not in the wooden cabinet though, that part I shipped separately.

The TSA agent asked what was in there, I said “it’s a sewing machine”, and she immediately called over a much larger agent to do the heavy lifting. He then said he had to take it to the extra strong X-ray because the only problem was they couldn’t see inside the machine, as it is a chunk of steel. So then I got to see inside my sewing machine. It was really cool but I think the agent was much less excited than I was.
posted by nat at 1:23 AM on March 13, 2020 [2 favorites]


Pre-9/11, I took a vintage croquet set from Ohio (where I bought it antiqueing prior to a wedding I attended) to Boston. At check-in, the airline provided me with a large bag and some tape gratis to ensure the croquet balls stayed put within their rack.
posted by mollymillions at 2:24 AM on March 13, 2020


Not carryon, but I packed a kitchenaid stand mixer and massive voltage converter in my checked luggage. That voltage converter probably looked sketchy af, but it was still there on the other side in London when I arrived from NYC!
posted by Grither at 11:28 AM on March 13, 2020


I take a folding acoustic guitar with me as carry-on (one of these), always get comments, and sometimes get asked to put it together just to prove it's real.

The prize, though, goes to my friend Nick, who bought an instrument in Boston and managed to get it into the cabin as carry-on on the flight back to London. It was an Ampeg Baby Bass. I've no idea how he did it (athough he is very charming), but he is now the King of Carry-On.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 3:05 PM on March 13, 2020


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