One can get carried away about carry-ons

L ife is very quickly turning me into a minimalist.

I’m not talking about an alternative lifestyle kind of guy who lives in the woods and eats only brown rice. No, I’ve just reduced the complexities of many of the things I do to cut down on the hassle.

Take Canadian border travel, for example. I don’t take any weapons, tobacco or liquor products into Canada and I try not to buy anything there other than food so I have nothing to declare when heading home.

I just want to drive up to the border, answer a few questions and head on home.

But air travel, which I thought I had finally figured out, has got me flummoxed again with this gel, water and aerosol thing.

If I wasn’t fishing, air travel used to be a breeze. I just never checked a bag.

That really sped things up, and it ensured that I wouldn’t have to worry about whether I would ever see my stuff again.

If I was fishing, I had to check a bag because of all my quasi-terrorist gear. For a while, you couldn’t carry on a four-piece fishing rod that fit nicely into the overhead luggage bin. I don’t know whether it was the aluminum case that was considered dangerous or the four pieces of thin graphite. Maybe it was the cork handle.

And I was once told by an airline employee that my fishing reel was considered a weapon because the fly line or backing could be used as a garrote – which in the movies is usually a thin strand of piano wire used by the mafia or a ham-handed spy from Eastern Europe to strangle someone.

Using my fly line in that manner never would have occurred to me. Although now that I think about it, my shoelaces would do the same thing if I tied them together.

Don’t get me started on the hooks attached to my fishing flies. I’ll just say that the fish don’t seem to have any problem spitting them out readily.

Long ago, I had solved this problem by shipping my fishing stuff to my destination ahead of time or by sticking it all inside a duffel bag and checking it into the belly of the plane.

You can also check your fishing rods separately, but that would be like attaching a flashing light and a sign that says: “Steal me. I’m an expensive fishing rod.”

I was feeling pretty smug about my travel system last week when I read the news that on any given day in August, 14,089 pieces of “lost or delayed” luggage hovered around in the nation’s airline system.

Actually, four or five were probably hovering in the airline system. My guess is the rest were in the garages and basements of the employees of the system. Or in the nation’s system of fine pawn shops.

In August, there was nearly one piece of lost or delayed luggage for every 10 people (8.08 bags per 1,000 passengers). That’s a big jump. In August 2005 the rate was 6.4 per 1,000.

Anyway, back to gel, water and aerosols.

First, you couldn’t take any of the stuff aboard under some fear that your economy-size bottle of Johnson’s baby shampoo was going to blow everyone out of the sky.

The ban on such things was OK by me. It fits my minimalist nature and was easy to understand.

Now you can take the stuff, but it has to be in 3-ounce bottles and carried in a one-quart zip-top bag for easy examination. The bottles can be bigger, but then they’d have to be stowed in your checked luggage and declared.

That didn’t sound too bad until I went to a Web site for the Transportation Security Administration in an attempt to find out more. (Sure, I could travel with nothing. But for medical and other reasons, that’s not an option.)

What can I take on an airplane?

According to the government, I can take all sorts of stuff onto an airplane. They include cigar cutters, corkscrews, cuticle cutters, screwdrivers and gel-filled bras. Scissors are OK, too, under 4 inches in length.

So are umbrellas or walking canes, but they must first be inspected to ensure that I’m not concealing a dangerous item, such as my fly fishing line.

Some things I can’t carry include box cutters, ice picks, knives, meat cleavers, razor blades, sabers, long scissors and swords. Also, no bats, including both the baseball and cricket varieties. Bows and arrows, golf clubs, hockey sticks and spear guns are banned. Of course, real guns and hatchets are out.

And I can’t bring my cattle prod, my hammer, my drill and drill bits, my night stick or nunchakus, or my stun gun and throwing star.

Blasting caps are also a no-no. So are dynamite or hand grenades. Lighters are also prohibited, as are disabling chemicals.

Speaking of disabling chemicals, Jell-O is not allowed as a carry-on, nor are pudding, whipped cream or yogurt.

Ditto for gel shoe inserts.

I get the ban on dynamite. I don’t get why I can wear a bra with gel inserts (not that I would), but I can’t put one in my shoe.

Next time I travel, I think I’m driving.

Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459 or benbow@heraldnet.com.