Oh, you annoying blonde woman.

They checked the weight of my carryon.  What!?!?!  Emirates Airlines.  The very first thing they asked me to do was put my carryon bag on the scale.  I have never had any airline do that.  I think this beautiful sleek middle eastern gate agent saw an annoying blonde woman coming her way and jumped right on the opportunity to put me in my place!

I just bought a new Think Tank roller bag to replace my dry box.  Blue Water Photo recommended it to me because it’s all the rage now with underwater photographers.  I painstakingly velcro’ed all these little sections into place to hold each and every little piece of my new underwater camera (Olympus OM-D E-M10)/housing (Nauticam) and my GoPro.  It fit everything perfectly.  It weighed a lot… but everything fit.

Not anymore.

I had to step out of line and repack.  But I guess I was lucky.  I got there early and I brought two checked bags instead of one and I still had plenty of room in them.  At the last moment I also slipped in this Point B backpack freebie that doesn’t take up any room at all.  They also asked me this question first.  They could have checked in my luggage and then weighed my carry on.  If that happened, I really would have been screwed.  Since the trip was just beginning and my positive attitude was still in tact, I took a deep breath and manhandled the most expensive set of items I owned.  I transferred my strobes, arms and anything else that I thought would hold up being in a checked bag.  I weighed it at one of the free check in weigh stations and it seemed to be way under the allocated kilos.

I got back in line… and tried again.  The Emirates Airlines gate agent smirked at me and said that I was still way over.  I guess the scale I chose to use wasn’t working.

I was back in the penalty box.  Repacking.

I removed pretty much every last thing with any weight to it at all (except for the housing and camera) and I was still over the 9 kilos.  Ugh.

I put as much into the backpack as I could… but now I’d have to take out the housing.  Why even have this carry on bag?  This was ridiculous.

So I put on my fleece and my rain jacket which luckily had huge pockets.  And I took out the camera/lens from the housing and put it in my jacket pocket.  I then put the backbag bag on and headed back to the counter.  For the third time.

After detailed questioning and a blatant lie that I wasn’t bringing any other carry on, they finally let me take my roller bag as carryon.  Thank God.  As I slowly backed away from the counter… so she wouldn’t see my backpack, I practically sprinted to security.  Crisis averted.

Even better, there was a bathroom right before security… so I ducked in and repacked everything from my backpack to the roller bag and was back in business.

I made it through security and to the gate, breathing a sigh of relief.  When it was time to board, I was in a panicked fear!  The same gate agent who put me through hell with the scales was now taking tickets to be seated.  She said nothing.  In fact, it didn’t even seem like she recognized me.

International Incident Diverted.