O.K a little bit embarrassing but here is my story. I arrived a long long time ago in JFK with the wife and two kids on our way to Disney Land on some cheap tickets. Since it was the first time for the family to touch down in the good old USA and since I was this very “experienced world traveler” flying for this little charter ( had been in JFK twice before!!) I thought it was a good idea to explain to mother and kids that this was not like our little hicktown back home , but a world city with all sort of undesirable creatures. It was an especially important briefing for my wife since she held ( and still holds) the world record for traveling with many many cabin and all sort of other plastic bags. So when we had collected all our bags I stopped in the middle of the arrival lounge in JFK ( to give it a little bit more decorum) put my Flight kit down ( You always travel with your flight kit so that everybody knows that you’ve done it before!) and told the full family entourage “ Now listen, I want you to be alert and careful with your things here because there are a lot of bad people who want to steal our bags! and we don’t want that to happen do we???? “
After I thought that my little pearl of travel wisdom had sunk in I said “ And let’s now go and have some fun!!” I bent down to pick up my Flight Kit, with the reservations for our car, with all the passports and with all our cash ( This was the time that a credit card was only for rich pilots!) and all other paperwork you need for vacation, only to find an empty place staring at me. Kit was gone!! After six hours delay we managed to get a flight back to “Hicktown”. We rented a Caravan and drove 65 times around the house!!