An American Tourister Luggage Moment

Remember those old American Tourister commercials?  They had one where a suitcase got bashed around by a gorilla, and I remember one where something fell off a car, and so on.  Well, I lived one yesterday.  Imagine looking into the rear view mirror of your Harley and seeing your camera bag bouncing across the freeway!  Yes, it was my Canon DSLR, it's extra lens, and all it's other gear.  Sue and I were out on our first ride on the Harley in... Well, a long time.  It was a beautiful day...

Wait, let's go back and recap the weekend.

Friday started off by taking us over to the home of my coworker, TJ, where he and his wife had offered us their free-standing lawn swing they no longer wanted.  A short while later, Sue's friend Mary that lives right around the corner from us and her husband Keven came by to take us to dinner at The Outback.  It was a prearranged night out--Their gift to us for all the work and help that Sue provided to them while they were getting their house in order after a kitchen fire several months ago.  From there we ended up playing Wii bowling at their house for a little while before walking home and enjoying some hot tub time.

We were hoping for a ride on the Harley on Saturday, but that wasn't in the cards.  For one, the weather turned iffy.  For two, we had her grandsons Joe and Shayne there all day while their daddy was taking care of an important obligation.  During the time they were there I dissected our new canoe and gave it a complete tuneup.  Coleman canoes have an aluminum tubing skeleton, and this one had some minor damage from some traumatic event in its past.  Anyway, everything got straightened, realigned, tightened, or anything else it needed to make it nice again.

Sunday found the weather going extremely positive.  We got ourselves together and got on the Harley, off for our usual round of combining picture-taking with whatever else we were doing that day.  This time I opted to put my camera bag on the rack behind Suzie.  I was never really fond of the way it fit into one of the saddlebags (slightly squished) and thought it would be easier to access whenever we stopped for pictures also.  Our first stop was for a delicious breakfast at the Krain Restaurant near Enumclaw.  Neither of us had ever been their before and we both loved it.

A little ways down the road found us stopping at an abandoned section of train track.  It had several flat cars still on it and Suz thought they might present a good photo opportunity or two.  We stopped another time after that, and from there just wound our way all around some rural areas with farms, fields, and mountain views.  When we reached the end of the small roads we had a short section of freeway we had to transverse.  At the bottom of a long hill going from Bonney Lake to Sumner, I heard someone just behind me on my left repeatedly laying on the horn. HONKHONKHONKHONK!  I know what that sound means--It means something is about to come off or already did.  I looked in my mirror just in time to see my full camera bag bouncing across the freeway!  As they came alongside us the gal was hollering out the window that we had lost something.  We hurriedly pulled over and I mumbled something like, "At least nobody ran over it."  Naturally, I was upset and feared the worst.  I walked back and found it sitting in the median, right next to a shallow ditch filled with water.  It was still intact.  I shook it and didn't hear anything unusual.  I walked back to Sue, and as I neared her she asked an obvious question like, "Is anything broken?"
"I don't know--I'm afraid to look."  I answered.
Well, the story had a happy ending.  Every single thing in the bag was unscathed.  That's a testament to the quality of a camera bag I guess.  It has some scuffs on it, but it's otherwise fine.  I'm glad I chose this particular bag, because the design of it has the camera actually suspended lens down in a sling of sorts.  I came dangerously close to ending my 365 Picture Project blog right then and there.  Needless to say, my camera went happily into one of the saddlebags where it should have been to begin with.  Note to self: NEVER use less than two bungee cords when you put anything on the rack.

We made a quick stop at Steve's house (who wasn't home), and a quick stop at her friend Judy's house and made our way back home.

Sarah came up for a visit while Sue went to Meeting, and we enjoyed some time together.  She took some pictures of of the finches on Sue's new feeder and we played a little with some dry ice.  When Sarah left, we capped our weekend off with a good burger from the grill and a soak in the hot tub.

Quite a weekend!