I proceeded to the airport, checked into my flight, and moved onto the security checkpoint. While leaving, I gazed at the boarding pass and realized I got an exit row and joyfully hoped that no one would sit next to me and I’d have leg-room and elbow-room. There were few travelers leaving that evening so there was no line to speak of waiting for the x-ray and magnometer.
Being an “expert traveler” I removed my shoes, jacket, and metallic objects from my person. I then opened my backpack and pulled out my laptop and my toothpaste tube, placed them in the tray and sent them through the x-ray. I walked through the metal detector and showed my boarding pass.
Suddenly the alarms went crazy and everyone stared at me. Two TSA agents approached me with a glowering gaze. After a significant pause, one looked at me and asked with a disapproving tone, “is this your toothpaste?”
“Yep”
“Do you have a plastic bag?” Unexpected question. I thought about several responses:
1. Do you have a goat?
2. What is the unladen airspeed of a swallow?
3. The calico cat meows at sunrise.
4. It’s not the heat so much as the humidity.
5. Look over there!
I went with “no.”
It turns out that all pastes and liquids must be in a 1-quart sealable plastic bag or they will be confiscated. I had always thought that the requirement was based on a need to measure that you are not carrying more that a quart of liquids in total. I made the mistake of mentioning that.
“No, the rule is that they must be in a bag. It’s not for measuring.”
At that point TSA agent #1 asked TSA agent #2 if, maybe, they could let my miniature toothpaste tube go through without the protective clear plastic encasing. The shocked expression on #2’s face was answer enough.
Meanwhile, I dug around in the backpack or a while and found a snack bag. For the record it is not a 1-quart bag; it is significantly smaller. That didn’t seem to matter. I ate my stash of Runts and then had an empty plastic bag.
He took my baggy, placed the toothpaste therein, and handed me the sealed package. I said “thanks”, opened the bag, put the toothpaste back in my backpack, threw away the bag, and walked to my flight.
At this point I was thinking I was home-free. But you know what they said about thinking: it makes a “th” out of “I” “n” the “King”.
I hear the loudspeaker come on throughout the concourse, “The county has declared an emergency. Please take shelter in the lowest level.” Uh-oh. I see this on CNN from time to time. Somebody angers the TSA or blows through a checkpoint and the concourse is evacuated. Then they clarified, “this is a tornado warning.”
With a sigh of relief I went through the underground chamber of weary travelers who all immediately expected to miss their flight. One of them was a guy who also lived in our building. I went up to him and said “hi”.
We talked about the building, traveling woes, and publishing papers. He is also a researcher. After the all-clear was given, he invited me up to the Crown Room to find out about the flight rescheduling.
If you have ever been traveling in bad weather, I strongly suggest you spend as much time as you can in the Crown Room. Free drinks, private gate agents, and fantastic food make it worth it. There was a chick pea tapenade, pita chips, olive bar, chicken and walnut salad, and a cheese plate.
The cheese plate was nowhere near the quality of the top two cheese plates I’ve ever had: one at Sarah’s Nana’s birthday party and the other my dad’s now infamous Wisconsin retort. Apparently, if you insult Wisconsin’s cheese-honor, they step up with a magnificent apple wood smoked cheddar, aged Muenster, and brie counterpunch.
After all the drama, the flight was delayed only 20 minutes, which was easily made up over the 9 hour flight, and I arrived in Germany on-time. As it turns out, there was no one sitting next to me and I could really lie out and sleep. As Shakespeare said, “All’s well that ends well.”
Ed. note: I was having trouble coming up with background items for the scene, and ended up going with the trite image of a terrorist slipping through security.
3 comments:
Way to go, Beach. Now the terrorists who read our blog know that all they have to do is distract TSA with toothpaste. Whose side are you on?
Now thats! a blog entry! I hung on every word. And, the return of the Powerpoint cartoons- A+
I remember my #1 cheese plate. Strangely, I was in Florida of all places, auditioning for the role of Sonny Crockett. I didn't get the part, but I discovered the coconut milk cheese plate- delicious with a bottle of Thunderbird.
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