With recent global events wreaking havoc with travel plans, I find the time has come to address what had become, until mid-August, a despicable trend of trying to circumvent the luggage carousel by wheeling the entire contents of one’s life on board air-liners and utilizing every last square inch of the overhead bins.

Yes, we have all asked ourselves -- as we watch that baby poop yellow Samsonite bag wend its lonely way around the circuit, unclaimed again -- why we checked our bags. Could we not have decreased our list of necessities by just a few shirts and saved ourselves this interminable waiting? What if our bags ended up in Timbuktu while we are in Marrakech? Perhaps next time, we will invest in one of those clever rolling bags like the flight attendants all seem to have.

But no! The powers that be have terminated that line of thought, just as many in the world were arriving at their local super-store to purchase cheap but convenient rolly-bags. Oh, yes, a conglomeration of terrorists, police and government agencies found that the best way to keep people checking luggage is by threatening the very safety of luggage at all. You want to arrive at your rental car 10 minutes earlier? Not now, sweetheart. You get to wait with everyone else again because if you want your shampoo, your contact lens solution, your KY jelly, or the Beaujolais Nouveau that you picked up on vacation, you better have put it in your checked luggage. Are we really looking at days when folks like myself cannot skip the hassle of waiting amongst a passel of edgy travelers hoping their bags will be first off because, we, minimalists that we are, only packed a rucksack?

I was just getting used to traveling sans razor (but don’t imagine that I went European and stopped using one; there are, after all, 7-11s everywhere) when they put them back on the list of approved accoutrements, and I was okay with that. Now I wonder what will become of the age-old advice of keeping a clean pair of chones in your carry-on in case your bags get swallowed up by the monster that is most international gateway airports? Will we have people stranded near airports, waiting for their lost wheely-cases, wearing dirty gabbies? Ai-ye.

Clean underwear, people! This is the consideration that the TSA/NTSB is not taking into consideration!

Perhaps I am overreacting at this point because, well, the only voyagers hit by the toughest restrictions are Brits, and we all know that they do not live by the same standards as we incredibly hygienic Americans. But when will our own security tightens such that we cannot even board an aircraft with so much as a copy of the New York Times (purely for the crossword, I assure you)?

I know, I could well be considered part of the problem because I like to skip the hassle of mingling with the masses clustered around Carousel B and just trot off on my merry way looking like I am off to hike the Alps, but really, I am also not a terrorist, and I like to have clean locs and some reading material without having to wait for it!