It is all fine and dandy to drive to San Francisco or Lost Wages or Phoenix from LA, but what happens if you need to go farther afield or even across an ocean? Not even BlkPhbe the trusted Prius can drive across the ocean.
As bizarre as I find the whole flying experience in recent years, particularly the part at the airport before departure, I do like airports. Back when one could walk one’s friends or family to their departure gate, before the advent of boarding pass folks beyond security only, I used to offer to take friends to the airport, as I enjoy the hustle, bustle, and air of possibility that pervades a good, large airport.
People are going places! I could be going places! What fun people watching!
The only problem in the post 9/11 world, the hustle and bustle has been replaced with dour faced, tired, stressed out people. And that only covers the employees and TSA folk, as for the passengers there is an air of defeat.
GW Bush’s pronouncement of “Mission Accomplished” aside, I think the terrorists have won. Instead of airports being a place of movement, anticipation, and possibilities, they are now a place of banal, mindless bureaucracy that verges on shows of soul-corroding power trips in the name of supposed security.
One wanna-be terrorist failed to blow up his shoe, now millions of people get to have their shoes inspected. One failed terrorist couldn’t get his underwear to explode, now many more innocents get to be patted down & felt up in the name of making us all safer.
Before you start thinking, “Well, I am willing to put up with ALL of that AND MORE to be secure!” Are you really that secure? I raise an eyebrow at you. You must not fly that often anymore.
As I detailed out in last night’s post, for trips shorter than 6 hours, I now drive rather than deal with the b.s. at the airport.
Flying internationally is one exception to my little no-fly rule, as I do like to get into an aluminum tube with wings and be strapped in for 10-12 hours so that I can emerge on the other side in a new world. This I like so much, I will put up with quite a bit.
I like watching Labrador, Baffin Island, Greenland, and Iceland from 35,000 ft in the air as the metal tube is getting jostled about by the turbulent air in the interstices of the North Atlantic and the North American landmass. It is even more fun to watch Greenland & Bafflin Island go by with a barf bag* in one hand while one is trying to operate a camera in the other while pressing the lens to the window.
One of these days, I will touch down in Iceland and Greenland for a proper visit rather than just fly over. For Greenland, I will even put up with the airport.
*Sometimes, if it smells real bad, no matter how hungry, don’t eat the airplane food. Yes, they still feed you on International flights.
