I thought it was probably about time I wrote about my trip to LA. It was a work trip, so I don’t have a lot of photos or anything, but the drama is worth writing about.

The first thing to note is that I booked the flight from Norway to London and the flight from London to LA separately in order to save the company some money. It was about a 3000kr difference (which is about $600 Australian) so it seemed worthwhile at the time… and since both flights were British Airways and it would allow me to meet up with my colleague, David, in London it all seemed like a good idea. HAH! I repeat, HAH!

I left home at 5.00 on Sunday morning in order to get the airport train to Gardemoen for my 7am flight. It’s about 2 and a half hours to London. I checked my bag in Oslo and asked if they could check it all the way to LA, even though the flights were booked separately. They said it would be fine, but that I should show my baggage claim ticket to the customer service people at Heathrow to make sure they knew what was going on. So once I met up with David in Heathrow, we got our boarding passes and confirmed that my suitcase was on its way to LA.

A 12 hour flight later, we arrived in LA… and of course my bag was nowhere to be found. Let me pause here to say that LAX is one of the most disorganised airports I have ever been in. There are security people with guns everywhere, and not a single service employee to be found, not even behind counters. Very frustrating.

We managed to find a British Airways employee who shrugged as if to say “Of course your bag isn’t here. Duh!” and asked me to go to the luggage counter to fill out a lost baggage claim. When that was done, she gave me a BA Visa card which was supposed to have $50 credit on it, to buy some essentials.

I should also mention here that thanks to the ridiculous restrictions on hand luggage, all I had with me was my laptop, my handbag (with nothing much in it besides my purse, a book and my passport) and a pair of slippers. I didn’t even have a hairbrush.

We took a cab to the hotel and checked in, then went for a walk around Marina del Rey to find a supermarket and something to eat. I had been awake for around 25 hours by this time (didn’t get any sleep on the plane thanks to the woman with the squirming baby sitting next to me). We managed to find a Ralphs supermarket where I bought some toothpaste, a toothbrush and a hairbrush… which cost around $39. I paid cash figuring I would need all $50 on the Visa card to buy clothes the next morning. We had dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen and by the end of the meal we were both seeing pink elephants on parade and desperately in need of sleep.

Monday morning we picked up the hire car, picked up JT from the airport and went in to the office to meet the team. I was feeling pretty disgusting by then, having no clean clothes to change into, so we stopped at an outlet store where I attempted to use BAs visa debit card. The bill came to $48 so I was pretty happy that it had come in under the amount I’d been given… only the damn card got declined.

I called BA to tell them what had happened, and after being connected to a fax machine when I called their customer relations number, I finally managed to get through to a real person. I explained that I was in LA on business and had a lot of important meetings to attend, and that I didn’t have anything with me that was suitable to wear. So I was told to buy what I needed (within reason) and just put in a claim when I got back to Oslo. So that evening after work, Huan from the office was commissioned with taking me to a shopping mall so I could buy some clothes and things. He dropped me off at a mall that had a driving range next door so he’d have something to do while I shopped.

You’d think shopping for clothes that you only have to temporarily pay for would be fun, but I was very jetlagged and completely overwhelmed by the selection in both Macy’s and Nordstrom. In the end, ten minutes before the place closed, a sales assistant in Nordstrom asked me if I needed help, and fairly quickly picked out an outfit that fit perfectly and looked great. A black cashmere sweater and a black and white pleated wool skirt. Very nice. I also got time to stop by Guess and pick up a dress/top that could be worn in the evening.

And what do you know… about an hour after I got back to the hotel (about 11pm) my suitcase arrived. Typical! I was SO relieved to be able to wash my hair and feel somewhat human again.

I won’t go into all the gory details of my week of work. Suffice to say there were a LOT of long days, long nights, and I wish I’d been able to get outside the office more to catch some of the unseasonable warmth (average temp around 25C).

Luckily for David and I, the Thanksgiving holiday meant that flying out of LA on the Friday would have been cripplingly expensive, so we got to stay for the weekend. On Saturday we met with Banne for brunch at Venice Beach (where I finally took some photos) and then we met with Huan that evening to watch Beowulf at the IMAX, which was pretty damn awesome. Sunday we spent shopping at the 3rd Street Prominade. I bought Chris his iPhone, which I am now incredibly jealous of, and bought myself some Guess jeans and spent a CRAPload of money in Sephora… best makeup and perfume shop EVER.

After a nice stroll along the beach at Marina del Rey, we headed for the airport where I bought myself a bottle of Vera Wang “Princess” perfume and a pair of GORGEOUS Dior sunglasses. Yes, I know Norway only has four hours of sunlight a day in winter… but I don’t care. These were the first sunglasses of the large variety that I have ever been able to wear without looking like a little girl trying on her mummy’s.

All was going well until we arrived an hour or so late to London… there was a woman from the airport ground staff waiting for me when we got off the plane to escort me to my connecting flight to Oslo. So after a quick over-the-shoulder farewell to David, my escort and I ran through Heathrow, shortcut security (and yet still both had to take our shoes off), and made it to my gate with about one minute to spare. I knew I was back amongst Norwegians when I almost got trampled on the way through the jetway, and then was hit repeatedly in the side of the head with a guy’s mobile phone (in his pocket) while he fiddled around in the overhead locker above me.

Of course my bags didn’t make it back to Oslo to meet me. I had checked two this time because I had gone over the weight limit with all my shopping, and didn’t want to drag my small wheelie case through Heathrow anyway. So two bags checked = two bags missing in action when I got to Oslo. The BA representative I spoke to only actually knew where one of them was, and assured me it would be delivered as soon as possible even though they weren’t sure exactly which one it was. When I asked about the second missing bag, I was told that they were sure “it would turn up”. Mmm confidence inspiring.

The sad part was that the receipts I had collected for my first lost baggage claim in LA were all in one of the lost suitcases. Sigh.

Luckily there is a happy ending. My first case arrived late the following day… this was the one with my new jeans and Chris’s iPhone in it… not the one with almost all my clothes, 5 pairs of shoes and my toiletries in it. I swear I am single-handedly keeping Colgate in business with all the toothbrushes and toothpaste I bought on this trip.

My second bag, after many anxious visits to the BA luggage tracking website, and a couple of slightly desperate phonecalls to the baggage handling department at Oslo airport, arrived on Tuesday evening… just as Chris and I had arrived at a restaurant to have dinner. He ran back to the apartment to receive the bag, since the guy who had arrived with it said he wasn’t allowed to wait and would have to take the bag back to the airport if we didn’t meet him to collect it. When we got home from the restaurant I started unpacking and realised that either the suitcase had been submerged at some point, or it had been left out in the rain, because almost everything inside was sodden. Luckily there was no permanent damage done, and the good people at Nordstrom had wrapped my cashmere/wool outfit in a couple of layers of plastic, so it was fine.

Whew! I think that’s my longest blog ever. I think I’m going to go rub some deep heat into my fingers after all that typing… excuse me a moment…