The Global War Against Lost Luggage

H2otown's bumper crop of interesting startups has a new entry: Luggage Forward.

Luggage Forward will overnight your luggage to wherever you're going. Advantage? Luggage Forward actually cares if your luggage arrives! They look especially good for sending things like golf clubs, bikes, and skis, which the airlines charge the earth for and more often than not end up mangling.

This is one H2otown can actually get behind. She stopped checking luggage long before 9/11 geborked the nation's airports. Here's why:

Long, long, long before the dawn of the Dot-Com era, H2otown was a knee-high little technology analyst who went to Hewlett Packard to give a talk. Back in those days, few hotels had those little in-room coffeepots. So H2otown used to bring a press pot and a tiny two-cup electric kettle with her to fuel her caffeine crazed, cable-news, late night Powerpoint creation binges that are the seedy underside of the tech analyst biz.

One time, her luggage didn't get there. She did get it-- about fifteen minutes before she was supposed to give her speech. She raced to her room, ripped open the bag which had been covered with bright orange "Searched by Security" stickers, and yanked out her suit.

Then she noticed something wrong.

There were little bits of broken glass all over her suit.

The security jamokes hadn't put the press pot back in its box, and it had been crushed.

H2otown brushed off the broken glass as best she could, and did her speech. Every time she moved, she'd discover some tiny sliver she'd missed. She finished the speech with more holes in her people-suit than Saint Sebastian after that unfortunate incident with the arrows. The client never suspected a thing. How we suffer for our art!

PS. LuggageForwarders: It would be great if you rented bike hardcases, hint hint -- you could probably make an arrangement with Belmont Wheelworks, who has rental cases.