Tags For Bags Houston: Fill & Download for Free

Years ago I was flying Southwest from Houston Hobby to Orlando and upon entering the baggage carousels to retrieve my bag I immediately identified it as the one totally destroyed. I found a large plastic bag and gathered my belongings of which were visible and identifiable. My traveling companion asked what I was going to do and I told hm I was going to raise hell with the first Southwest employee I saw. I did and was directed to Southwest’s Customer Complaint. I entered the waiting room and was immediately treated with respect and apology which took the wind out of my sails. In just a few minutes I was offered to go back into a storage area and to choose whatever replacement bag I wanted. My destroyed bag was a smallish roll around bag small enough to fit in the overhead bin but because all the bins had been filled I had to tag the bag as checked luggage when I boarded. It wasn’t an expensive bag but was configured exactly to my preferences and had survived many flights as carryon baggage. The Southwest attendant told me to take my pick of any of the many brand new luggage in the storage room regardless of the type I had lost. I picked out a brand new London Fog four-wheeled roll around bag with an extension handle. It was a bit larger than what I actually needed but the attendant told me that the bag met the dimension requirements to fit in an overhead bin so we had deal. He asked why I hadn’t chosen a larger more expensive suitcase capable of storing enough clothes for a week and I told him all I wanted was a replacement for what I had lost, not trying to rip the airline off for something I didn’t deserve. He chuckled and told me I was too honest.

I was asked by my CEO to make a last minute trip to Germany for a meeting with one of our suppliers. I was flying out of Mexico through Houston, then Dulles to Nuremberg, first class. When I got to the gate in Houston, the preboarding had started and the gate agent was yelling at a passenger waiting to board. He had two skycaps helping him with his wheel chair and a half dozen carry on bags, and the gate agent apparently had told him he couldn’t take that many bags with him. He objected, and she wouldn’t let him preboard.I boarded, and took seat 1B, my least favorite choice. As the plane filled up, seat 1A remained empty. When everyone else had boarded, they let the problem passenger on…seat 1A of course. He came aboard with his two skycaps, and they tried to find places for all of his carryon baggage. He continuously complained about where they were putting the bags, claiming he needed easy access to every one of them. He finally sat down with a small hard cooler under his legs, and we closed up, backed out and started taxiing to the runway. Every time one of the cabinet attendants would pass, he would try to stop them and make a request. As we were nearing the runway, the chief attendant (purser?) came back and leaned over me and asked him what he wanted. He said “I want to talk to whoever (sic) is in charge!” She smiled and said that the captain would talk to him when we got back to the gate! As we were returning to the Houston terminal unscheduled, they had to find an empty gate, staff it with ramp attendants, gate agents, and airport police. When we finally go to the gate and they opened the door, the police came aboard and assorted the passenger off, we buttoned up and finally go cleared to depart.I missed my connection in Dulles, got to Nuremburg a day late, lost my baggage in the plane change, and showed up for the meeting a day late, no shower, no shave, wearing blue jeans and a tee shirt.After the meeting and I finally got to the hotel, they couldn’t find my room reservation, and my baggage which was to have been delivered to hotel was missing. I’m standing at the front desk, slightly pissed off, telling them the reservations had been made months in advance (it was a trade show and we had reserved a block of rooms), and the airline was telling me bags had been delivered to the hotel hours earlier. The front desk crew kept telling me I didn’t have a reservation and my bags were not there when a bell boy walked up. He heard my name, and said “Mr. Taylor, you’re baggage is in your room where I put it two hours ago, and your room number is XXX.” Needless to say, I gave him a handsome tip and retired directly to the bar.On the return to the USA, I was cooling my heels in the Lufthansa lounge in Frankfurt when I was paged to the front desk. They told me my suitcase had been pulled off at the ramp because something inside was making a buzzing noise. They wouldn’t load the suitcase until I went to the gate and opened it up, and turned off whatever was buzzing. I was sure there was nothing in the suitcase that would buzz, but I went to the gate to see what the problem was. They took me out the gate to an elevator down to the ramp where security and a baggage handler were waiting.When I stepped out of the elevator and asked where the suitcase, they pointed to a black American Tourister. As my case was a Samsonite and blue, I told them it wasn’t mine and asked why they had called me. They pointed to a luggage tag with the name Taylor. I pointed to the luggage claim tag from the airline, and showed my claim ticket which did not match. They got indignant and told me they couldn’t put the suitcase on board unless I opened it up and turned off whatever was buzzing.I told them I didn’t care if the threw the suitcase in the trash, my flight was getting ready to board, and I had left my carry on in the lounge, and I was out of there. Made it back in time to board as the last passenger and made it home with no further issues.

This is a very difficult question to answer.Was it when they (NASA) paged me while I was searching for Manatees near the Cape Canaveral lock station in Florida back in June of 1998? Was it when I returned a call to the number affixed on my pager screen (google “pager” if you youngsters are unaware!) and spoke with Astronaut Dave Leestma —at the time— the head of all astronauts? Was it the first time I stepped onboard the middeck of the space shuttle Atlantis to launch on a beautiful Florida afternoon on June 8, 2007?Space shuttle Atlantis launches from the Kennedy Space Center, June 8, 2007 with The Ordinary Spaceman onboard for the first time!Was it the day I floated 225 nautical miles above a darkened earth, as seen through an opened airlock hatch on the International Space Station?I’m still not sure. What I can tell you is that the first time it actually struck me I had been selected —with a tingle down my spine, and a pride I had never before experienced— I was at Ellington Field some 15 miles southeast of downtown Houston.It was there, in the Personal Equipment Shop (PE), with newfound friend (and, as it turned out, a fellow Nebraskan) Ervin “Sarge” Knehaus, that I would fully realize I was beginning a journey I had dreamed of since I was 9 years old.Sarge had nonchalantly pulled out an oversized Army-green duffle bag and dropped it with a thud on a nearby wooden picnic table. He unzipped the bag and began to remove all the equipment a baby astronaut was going to need. Included were things like my black leather flight boots, a wrist watch, a knee board, a flashlight, and then… the pinnacle of all flight equipment (in my opinion anyway), my first royal blue astronaut flight suit.Crisp, clean, and lightly creased from its time in a tightly packed shipping box, Sarge instructed me to don the suit. “After all,” he said, “… we need to see if it fits.”Having donned the perfectly fitting flight suit (I had sent Sarge my physical measurements weeks earlier) Sarge graciously (and perhaps in a planned maneuver?) left the room. There I stood, clad in blue, looking at myself in a full-length mirror. I couldn’t take my eyes off the leather name tag. Clayton C. Anderson, Astronaut JSC read the gold embossed letters, centered above and below the striking symbol for an astronaut mission specialist wings. Did I now realize I was an astronaut? Perhaps. I sensed something special was happening, but I knew I still had a long, long way to go.Keep lookin’ up!