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MP: Adventures in Air Travel
Today I bring you a thrilling story in several parts: Adventures in Air Travel!
Part One: Barbecue is unavailable, please try eggs or bourbon
I've been in Tennessee, visiting the family. I got sick my next-to-last day there and had to postpone my return, But Saturday I had been on the antibiotics for a few days, so I caught a ten-in-the-morning flight out of Nashville to return to San Francisco. Usually I get one last barbecue fix at the Nashville airport on my way out of town, and on this trip, like on prior ones, I went to the Whitt's Barbecue stand in Terminal C. It was open, but they only had eggs and biscuits. Now eggs and biscuits are nice—they even had bacon and sausage as options—but when you want pulled-pork-barbecue, eggs and biscuits just don't cut it. It turns out they don't start serving barbecue until 10:30 in the morning. Yet another reason to prefer afternoon departures from now on.
They moved me up to the front of the cabin, to the seats where you can't put anything in front of you, but there is room to stretch your legs, so that was nice. Also there was no-one in the seat next to me, even nicer. Behind me was a developmentally disabled young man who kept saying "Howdy!" and giving running commentary about what he could see out the window the entire flight. He was seated between two older adults, probably his parents. Next to me was a cute twenty-something guy in a white bandanna, with a lot of tattoos and piercings, who smelled very strongly of alcohol. It wasn't until we were getting off the plane that I realized he was traveling with the family behind us. I think he was drunk so as to endure flying with Howdy-guy.
I tuned out Howdy-guy and listened to A Hat Full of Sky on my iPhone. And then we bumped our way through growing storm clouds down to Dallas.
Part Two: I receive presents for someone else's birthday
In Dallas I met my friend Telos, who greeted me with a bouquet of pink bell-like flowers. She fed me home-made chicken soup with bow-tie pasta - so tasty! And nummy herbed cheese spread on fresh ciabatta. And little individually packed tres leches cakes with strawberries. On her birthday. Naturally I sang to her, as we picnicked in baggage claim. Then she gave me an embarrassment of fruit: an apple, a pear, a tangerine, cherries, blueberries, and some dried fruit mix. Plus a box of chocolates. Her theory was that it had been my birthday recently, and that she really likes to feed people. Plus I had given her an excuse to get out of the house for a little while and be called by her proper name, instead of "Mommy." Who was I to argue? Happy birthday again, Telos!
Part Three: DFW TSA needs a time out until they feel they are ready to behave nicely
Then I had to book it back through security. As Telos and I parted, she told me she hoped TSA didn't pick on me for having blue hair. I don't know if it was my hair that was the problem, but man, Dallas TSA needed a juice box and a time out, and maybe an afternoon nap. Right off the bat the guy monitoring the buckets going through the x-ray had a major problem with my nebulizer. Which I had separated out (in its little carry case) for separate scanning, along with my laptop. He gave me this look when I said, "It's medical equipment," and made me take it out of the bag and get a separate bucket just for it. Mind you this thing has been through TSA screening at countless airports countless of times before this with nary a problem.
Whatever. I complied and put it in a separate bucket, so now I had five buckets of crap going through the x-ray: purse, boots and coat, computer, nebulizer, backpack. After going through the regular metal detector, I encountered one of those fancy and controversial whole body scanner things, which they were only making some people go through. Natch, I got picked. And there was something wrong with the intercom between the woman conducting the scan and the unseen people interpreting the scan somewhere behind closed doors. The woman was pleasant enough, but she kept having to call to the people on her walkie talkie, and getting no response. I wasn't allowed to step away from the scanner until I was cleared.
Now here was my one mistake: I had a bottle half-full of water in my backpack. Since I was only transiting through Dallas, and had only gone outside security to see Telos, I had pretty much completely forgotten about my water bottle. Angry what-the-heck-sort-of-terrorist-device-is-this-nebulizer-thing guy pulled it out and gave me a scolding, furious look, like I had personally been trying to bring down the next several flights to Bangkok with my half-filled Japanese-green-tea-turned-water-bottle. I apologized and said I'd forgotten it was in there, but he was already storming off to police something else.
Scanner lady finally got in touch with scanner man and verified that under my clothes I was thoroughly naked. She waved me on to retrieve my belongings. But of course since it had taken so long for her to get through to the people who look at naked travelers, my five buckets of crap had backed up the line of other people's buckets coming behind me. Angry-TSA-guy came back over and picked up one of my buckets while I was putting my boots back on and snarled at me, "I'm moving your things over here," and proceeded to slam one of my buckets down on a metal table a little further down. At this point I had my left boot on and my right foot halfway into the other one. I thought there was some further problem and I was now about to get my belongings hand inspected by Mr. I-hate-my-job, so I asked if I could finish putting my boots on, because sometimes if they've decided that the chocolate bar you are trying to get through security might be plastique, they don't want you touching your belongings. He snapped at me to hurry up, and moved more buckets.
Thoroughly confused, I finished putting on my boot and went to stand at table number two, with my buckets arrayed before me. Angry-guy stomped away. I looked up at him and asked if there was a problem. He growled no, I could go.
Oooooo-kay.
So I repacked everything, putting nebulizer back in pouch, pouch and laptop back in backpack, little baggie of hand cream and nasal spray and other suspicious but less-than-three-ounces liquids back in purse, and was about to put my coat back on when, behind me, I heard an angry woman shouting, "Oh no you don't! You don't talk to me that way!" A man said something indistinct. The woman became shriller. "Me calm down? I'm not the one who needs to calm down. You don't talk to me that way!"
Naturally, I turned to look, expecting another traveler to be having trouble with the TSA-grouches. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was a TSA woman having a fight with a TSA man. No, really. Big, white haired, pink-skinned TSA guy (not Angry-man, but a different one) and little, feisty, dark-skinned TSA woman (not the scanner lady, but yet another different one) waving her hands and shouting. Angry-man summoned a supervisor and he and two others started rushing towards the confrontation. Travelers behind the commotion undoubtedly despaired of making their flights. Those of us on the "secure" side of security, grabbed up our stuff in a big damn hurry and fled to our gates.
Part Four: After that it was uneventful except for the cute dyke
I made it to my gate just as they were finishing loading the plane, and crammed myself into my tiny window seat over the wing. The people who had to sit next to me looked like they might be newlyweds, and both slept the whole way to San Francisco. Before we took off I got a photo of the rather fascinating storm clouds over Dallas. Oh, and there was this incredibly cute and rather butch-looking young woman who had been on my flight from Nashville who was also on my flight to San Francisco. We were sitting on the same row, on opposite windows, and chatted briefly as we entered the plane. We kind of looked each other over and came to the same conclusion: that neither of us belonged in Tennessee long-term. And laughed. She, like I, had been visiting family in Tennessee, but unlike I she was just visiting California. Then she was heading for Madrid, Spain, where she was living.
Wayne picked me up at SFO, my luggage arrived just fine, and I got home and crashed. Sunday was a nice quiet recovery day, and then today I was supposed to be back to normal, except that I woke up at three in the morning with a headache so bad it made me cry, and I then had the headache, plus accompanying nausea and vertigo all day, so spent the day in bed. But anyway, I'm home, even if I still have the sinus infection. Yay home. And that was my adventure.
Stormy skies over the tarmac at DFW click to enlarge
Part One: Barbecue is unavailable, please try eggs or bourbon
I've been in Tennessee, visiting the family. I got sick my next-to-last day there and had to postpone my return, But Saturday I had been on the antibiotics for a few days, so I caught a ten-in-the-morning flight out of Nashville to return to San Francisco. Usually I get one last barbecue fix at the Nashville airport on my way out of town, and on this trip, like on prior ones, I went to the Whitt's Barbecue stand in Terminal C. It was open, but they only had eggs and biscuits. Now eggs and biscuits are nice—they even had bacon and sausage as options—but when you want pulled-pork-barbecue, eggs and biscuits just don't cut it. It turns out they don't start serving barbecue until 10:30 in the morning. Yet another reason to prefer afternoon departures from now on.
They moved me up to the front of the cabin, to the seats where you can't put anything in front of you, but there is room to stretch your legs, so that was nice. Also there was no-one in the seat next to me, even nicer. Behind me was a developmentally disabled young man who kept saying "Howdy!" and giving running commentary about what he could see out the window the entire flight. He was seated between two older adults, probably his parents. Next to me was a cute twenty-something guy in a white bandanna, with a lot of tattoos and piercings, who smelled very strongly of alcohol. It wasn't until we were getting off the plane that I realized he was traveling with the family behind us. I think he was drunk so as to endure flying with Howdy-guy.
I tuned out Howdy-guy and listened to A Hat Full of Sky on my iPhone. And then we bumped our way through growing storm clouds down to Dallas.
Part Two: I receive presents for someone else's birthday
In Dallas I met my friend Telos, who greeted me with a bouquet of pink bell-like flowers. She fed me home-made chicken soup with bow-tie pasta - so tasty! And nummy herbed cheese spread on fresh ciabatta. And little individually packed tres leches cakes with strawberries. On her birthday. Naturally I sang to her, as we picnicked in baggage claim. Then she gave me an embarrassment of fruit: an apple, a pear, a tangerine, cherries, blueberries, and some dried fruit mix. Plus a box of chocolates. Her theory was that it had been my birthday recently, and that she really likes to feed people. Plus I had given her an excuse to get out of the house for a little while and be called by her proper name, instead of "Mommy." Who was I to argue? Happy birthday again, Telos!
Part Three: DFW TSA needs a time out until they feel they are ready to behave nicely
Then I had to book it back through security. As Telos and I parted, she told me she hoped TSA didn't pick on me for having blue hair. I don't know if it was my hair that was the problem, but man, Dallas TSA needed a juice box and a time out, and maybe an afternoon nap. Right off the bat the guy monitoring the buckets going through the x-ray had a major problem with my nebulizer. Which I had separated out (in its little carry case) for separate scanning, along with my laptop. He gave me this look when I said, "It's medical equipment," and made me take it out of the bag and get a separate bucket just for it. Mind you this thing has been through TSA screening at countless airports countless of times before this with nary a problem.
Whatever. I complied and put it in a separate bucket, so now I had five buckets of crap going through the x-ray: purse, boots and coat, computer, nebulizer, backpack. After going through the regular metal detector, I encountered one of those fancy and controversial whole body scanner things, which they were only making some people go through. Natch, I got picked. And there was something wrong with the intercom between the woman conducting the scan and the unseen people interpreting the scan somewhere behind closed doors. The woman was pleasant enough, but she kept having to call to the people on her walkie talkie, and getting no response. I wasn't allowed to step away from the scanner until I was cleared.
Now here was my one mistake: I had a bottle half-full of water in my backpack. Since I was only transiting through Dallas, and had only gone outside security to see Telos, I had pretty much completely forgotten about my water bottle. Angry what-the-heck-sort-of-terrorist-device-is-this-nebulizer-thing guy pulled it out and gave me a scolding, furious look, like I had personally been trying to bring down the next several flights to Bangkok with my half-filled Japanese-green-tea-turned-water-bottle. I apologized and said I'd forgotten it was in there, but he was already storming off to police something else.
Scanner lady finally got in touch with scanner man and verified that under my clothes I was thoroughly naked. She waved me on to retrieve my belongings. But of course since it had taken so long for her to get through to the people who look at naked travelers, my five buckets of crap had backed up the line of other people's buckets coming behind me. Angry-TSA-guy came back over and picked up one of my buckets while I was putting my boots back on and snarled at me, "I'm moving your things over here," and proceeded to slam one of my buckets down on a metal table a little further down. At this point I had my left boot on and my right foot halfway into the other one. I thought there was some further problem and I was now about to get my belongings hand inspected by Mr. I-hate-my-job, so I asked if I could finish putting my boots on, because sometimes if they've decided that the chocolate bar you are trying to get through security might be plastique, they don't want you touching your belongings. He snapped at me to hurry up, and moved more buckets.
Thoroughly confused, I finished putting on my boot and went to stand at table number two, with my buckets arrayed before me. Angry-guy stomped away. I looked up at him and asked if there was a problem. He growled no, I could go.
Oooooo-kay.
So I repacked everything, putting nebulizer back in pouch, pouch and laptop back in backpack, little baggie of hand cream and nasal spray and other suspicious but less-than-three-ounces liquids back in purse, and was about to put my coat back on when, behind me, I heard an angry woman shouting, "Oh no you don't! You don't talk to me that way!" A man said something indistinct. The woman became shriller. "Me calm down? I'm not the one who needs to calm down. You don't talk to me that way!"
Naturally, I turned to look, expecting another traveler to be having trouble with the TSA-grouches. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was a TSA woman having a fight with a TSA man. No, really. Big, white haired, pink-skinned TSA guy (not Angry-man, but a different one) and little, feisty, dark-skinned TSA woman (not the scanner lady, but yet another different one) waving her hands and shouting. Angry-man summoned a supervisor and he and two others started rushing towards the confrontation. Travelers behind the commotion undoubtedly despaired of making their flights. Those of us on the "secure" side of security, grabbed up our stuff in a big damn hurry and fled to our gates.
Part Four: After that it was uneventful except for the cute dyke
I made it to my gate just as they were finishing loading the plane, and crammed myself into my tiny window seat over the wing. The people who had to sit next to me looked like they might be newlyweds, and both slept the whole way to San Francisco. Before we took off I got a photo of the rather fascinating storm clouds over Dallas. Oh, and there was this incredibly cute and rather butch-looking young woman who had been on my flight from Nashville who was also on my flight to San Francisco. We were sitting on the same row, on opposite windows, and chatted briefly as we entered the plane. We kind of looked each other over and came to the same conclusion: that neither of us belonged in Tennessee long-term. And laughed. She, like I, had been visiting family in Tennessee, but unlike I she was just visiting California. Then she was heading for Madrid, Spain, where she was living.
Wayne picked me up at SFO, my luggage arrived just fine, and I got home and crashed. Sunday was a nice quiet recovery day, and then today I was supposed to be back to normal, except that I woke up at three in the morning with a headache so bad it made me cry, and I then had the headache, plus accompanying nausea and vertigo all day, so spent the day in bed. But anyway, I'm home, even if I still have the sinus infection. Yay home. And that was my adventure.
Stormy skies over the tarmac at DFW click to enlarge