HAHAHAHA frens, I hv brought a very funny incident for ol of u. I have laughed mah heart out after reading dis 1....
This one really caught me off guard… As I was leaving India on Saturday night I checked my luggage in with Cathay Pacific at the New Delhi International Airport and headed towards security on my way to the departure gate. I went through the regular ‘are you carrying anyliquids or gels‘ schpiel and pulled my laptop out and put it in a separate tray for the x-ray machine then walked through the body metal detector thing and when I got to the other side there was an delay in getting my bags…
Now this is fairly normal for me because as a juggler I often put stuff in my hand luggage that the airport security people raise an eyebrow over… Most travellers, for example, don’t carry hat boxes with Top Hatsin them… I’m used to having my bags run through the screening process multiple time and questions asked about the content of my carry on cases, but typically once the questions are asked I’m allowed to go on my merry way having suffered only a minor delay.
Such was not the case on Saturday night however…
I get to the other side of the screening and sure enough my bags are run through a second time. Then the bag search… They open up my top hat bag and pull out my five silicone juggling-balls…
“We’re going to need to run these through again…”
OK… What ever…
Now I should also point out at this point that the guys who do the security at the International Airport in New Delhi are Indian Military and not your typical TSA guy from North America. They have a slightly more menacing appearance and some of them carry side arms or rifles… Definitely not the sort of guys you want to piss off…
“Can I see your boarding pass please.”
I hand it over and they look at it, then look back at me and say -
“I’m afraid you can’t travel with these balls, they’re a restricted item.”
I’m like – What? – Juggling balls a restricted item???”
“Yes”
“Can you tell my why I’m not allowed to take them on the plane? I mean I didn’t have a problem on my way to India with these and I’m having a hard time understanding what the problem is..”
“They are a restricted item… Can you follow me to the head of security please…”
So I go over to the dude in the picture and he explains to me that I won’t be able to carry these on the plane in my hand luggage. These‘Restricted items’ will be placed in a special Cathay Pacific box and put in the checked luggage area of the plane…
Huh???
At this point, a representative from Cathay Pacific is there helping and I turn to him in the hopes of getting some sort of explanation -
“I’m sorry for the confusion,” I say, “But can you explain to me why these juggling balls are a ‘Restricted item’?”
The guy from Cathay smiles at me and says…
“Well… You might start juggling and distract the pilot…”
I smile, resign myself to the fact that I won’t see my balls until I get to Vancouver and stop resisting the inevitable.
Flash forward to my arrival in Vancouver on Sunday and sure enough my specially boxed juggling balls were spat out onto the baggage carousel at YVR so the story had a happy ending. To be honest, not having to carry the extra weight of 5 three-inch silicone juggling-balls in my hand-luggage wasn’t necessarily a bad thing… The only reason I normally keep them in my hand-luggage is to keep the weight of my checked luggage below 50 lbs… On this particular trip I could have checked them as I wasn’t travelling with quite as much in the way of props as I sometimes do… Oh well
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