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I’m very bummed out because I lost $50 yesterday. I was in the Toronto airport coming back to California when I bought some ice wine for my colleagues in the duty free shop. I contemplated for a long time whether I should make the purchase because the ice wines were pretty expensive but I reckon that it’s the holidays and I should be nice to people who’ve helped me at work all year! So, cash in hand to give to the cashier and off the bottle goes into my hand carry.

When I got to Las Vegas where my connecting flight was, I was told that I needed to go to another terminals where I had to go through the security gate! Since I had a lot of time, this didn’t bother me one bit even though I had to find the shuttle (it wasn’t that easy since there were no signs), wait 15 minutes and then get to the main terminal where my next flight was. After the usual huge lineup at the security checkpoint, I was flagged by the officer going through the gates because they said I couldn’t bring any liquid!

Doh!

The officer was actually very helpful and he offered a few options on what I could do next:

1. Check the wines in by checking the my hand carry bag
2. Buy another luggage and put the wine in and have the whole bag checked
3. Mail the wine home
4. Throw it away

The first option was not possible because I had many valuable items like my laptop that I refuse to put in check-in luggage as I cannot afford to lose it. I thought the second option of buying another luggage was pretty expensive but the officer said that you can get one outside for $10. However, this means that the wine would not be packed tight and I’m sure it will break. The third option, mailing, was going to cost $10-20 plus packaging so that was still quite expensive. So I really only had one choice, so I asked the officer to throw it away. $50 thrown into the garbage! I was really sad for a little while because I kept thinking that I use so much energy to save money, yet things like this happen for no apparent reason. I guess like they say in life, sh*t happens.

I could’ve always consumed all the wine as an alternative but I did not think I would be alive to write to you about it.

What would you have done in my case? Would you choose any of the other options or could you think of anything else that I could’ve done? How would you feel if this happened to you? Any suggestions on how I can look at this optimistically?