When you travel a lot, there are certain things you learn as you go along:
- The 2 most overlooked TSA rules
- A new way to get into Delta SkyClubs
- How to get around the 3-1-1 liquid rule
- Ways to avoid getting a false positive on swab test
- Why your hotel safe is NOT safe
You learn a lot of things about safety along the way, too. Probably the most important are all the ways to avoid being a victim of thieves. You’ve probably read them – wear a money belt, have a decoy false wallet, use locks on your bags, don’t leave things of value in your car or out in the open where they can be swiped, always be vigilant, etc.
One of the safety tips that tends to be mentioned over and over is to not carry things in your back pocket. It makes perfect sense…a lump in your back pocket is pretty obvious, and you can’t see when someone is walking behind you, getting ready to quietly make their move.
There’s another reason why you shouldn’t leave things in your back pocket, and it has nothing to do with theft. A friend of mine, Audrey, recently learned that the hard way.
Audrey is a Facebook friend who runs a Key West-centric group called Visit Key West – Ask Real Locals Anything. Her group is one of the best ones out there to learn about anything you’d want to know about Key West. Joe and I met Audrey in person on our visit to Key West last year, and she is one of the most real and down-to-earth people you could ever know.
Audrey, like us, is a traveler. She flies up to New York all the time, and I’ve also followed her travels to California, Canada, ALL throughout Florida, etc. Most recently she was in Costa Rica, and I gotta tell ya -some of the things she saw were just gorgeous!
Anyway, all good things must come to an end and Audrey was on her way home from Costa Rica, when she posted this on her Facebook timeline:
What happened? Turned out Audrey was at the airport and nature called. When she got into the stall in the ladies’ room and pulled her pants down, her passport and boarding pass, which were both in her back pocket, fell out of said pocket and into the toilet.
Ew.
She got a new boarding pass and, the kindhearted soul that she is, she wouldn’t let the customs guy touch the passport because he wasn’t wearing gloves.
Audrey made it home OK and is now working on getting a new passport. And fortunately, she had less than a year left on her current passport so it’s not a huge loss.
So let that be a lesson to you – if you’re going to use the facilities, make sure you don’t have anything of importance in your back pocket! 😉
*** Many thanks to Audrey, for allowing me to share the story of, as she called it, her ditziness. 😉
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