Vehemently Vitriolic

As I was writing part 2 of my San Francisco trip, I got onto the subject of the TSA and my adventures with airports, I thought I would include some background. The problem is, I am equal parts idiot and not-knowing-when-to-shut-the-hell-up. Ingredients for hijinx and hilarity to be sure.

My wife and I like to travel with backpacks. This goes back to our pre-flab days when we would actually use a backpack to….well, backpack.When we go through airports, we always get the third (and possible fourth and ocasionally fifth) degrees.
On one trip through LAX, we walked up to the ticket counter, backpacks in tow. The ticket counter lady was very interested in what sort of people would use such a vessel to travel with. Bunch of idiots is the look we got. Anyone who doesn’t use wheels must be some sort of commie. Or something.

Anyway, the conversation started out somewhat familiarly:
“Did you pack these bags yourself?” asked the ticket agent. “Yes” I replied placing my bag on the scale. “So, you can vouch for the contents of the bag?” she retorted still eyeing us with malcontent. “Um yes. We know all the contents becuase we packed the bags not a few hours ago” I offered, being helpful as possible. Clearly the whole backpack-as-travel-clothes-holder-thing was troubling her. “Do you have any fuels in the bags?”. “No” I said. “Any camping equipment? Like stove maybe?”. Still wishing to merely get through this I answered “No, no stoves or camping equipment or fuel of any sort in these bags, which we packed ourselves”. “So…..no gas, no tanks of fuel in there?”.
I was starting to get miffed, but continued on. “No, no gas, no stoves, no camping equipment, no fuel tanks in the bags that we packed ourselves” feeling all the while like we’re playing that game where someone sings a song and ads a verse and you have to remember the whole song to that point or you are “out”. Now that I think about it, maybe its a pre-pre-screening system thought up by the TSA to weed out forgetful terrorists.
By this point my wife is starting to see the writing on the wall.
“So, no gas…nothing flammable in there?”
“Really, no”
“Nothing flammable at all…anything that might become flammable? Nothing at all flammable in there? Nothing at all that could catch fire…..”
At this point I was done with ticket agent, so I , for whatever reason, answered
“Well, we do have some childrens pajamas”

My wife basically sunk below the counter and hoped for a DC-10 to crash through the airport. The ticket agent, clearly not having the sense of humour one would expect, motioned to a large-ish machine with large police-looking guards and said “you’ll need to go over there, sir”. I spend a lot of time going “over there” when I go through airports.

On another occassion, also through LAX, we came to the ticket counter with our backpacks in tow. This time, the questioning wa similar, but she seemed more bent on making sure we had packed the bags and no one had carried them since we packed them, or openeind them or come within twenty feet of them or poked them with a big stick or taunted them or made funny faces at them or called them names. She wanted to make it crystal clear that had our bags ever been out of our site for even a nano-second, terrorists would be waiting to assault them. Just to make sure, the bags were ALWAYS in our possesion right? Like always? Totally, forever? No one ever touched them? Not once? No? Great.

She then told us to go drop our bags over at the x-ray mahine and continue through to our gate. We looked over at the x-ray machine to see a gigantic pile of bags. Like a huge pile of random bags thrown into a pile. Think of a big junk pile, thats exactly what it looked like. We were to toss our bags onto this pile. Which, in itself, seemed counter productive. Like, what if our flight was in 5-minutes, but our bag was on the bottom of the heap?

At any rate, we were told we had to subject our bags to this. So fine. Except, there was nobody there. Nobody. Not a guard, not a TSA agent NO ONE! I pointed this out to the ticket lady. I mentioned that there appeared not to be a sole around this gigantic litter of luggage. “Oh, he’s on a break. He’ll be back in about 15-minutes.”

Now, perhaps you’ve seen the issue I had here. After going through 10-minutes of questioning from ticket lady about leaving my bag unattended, protocol now dictated that I…..leave my bag…..unattended. Seriously. I flat out pointed this out to her that “I don’t want to leave my bag unattended in that pile” I said. At this point I really thought that mythical light-bulb above her head would go off, but all I got was a blank look back like I was a complete idiot.
“Well….you have to have your bag x-rayed. It will be fine”. To which I answered staright at her “You just asked me about leaving my bag, and now you WANT me to leave my bag? Doesn’t that seem sort of….dumb to you?”
“You’ll need to go over there, sir” pointing to another different yet equally the same security booth. My wife, once again, attempted to crawl into the floor.

During the same trip (we eventually just dumped our bags unattended) we then had to go through the gigantic waste of space known as the TSA. Well, not even the TSA yet. These were LESS paid “security” guards. You need to have ID with you at all times in LAX. ALL times. After we left our bags, be walked, oh, 10-yards from the ticket booth where we had just shown our ID to the ticket agent, and into a “queue”. Its a queue in name only as there was no one else queued-up in it. But, it had those black rental poles that fabric comes out of that look all official-like and herds people. Anyway, we had to show a “security” guard our ID again. Then we walked LIERALLY 10-steps to the base of an escalator, where we AGAIN had to show ID to get on the blessed escalator.

The escalator is, at most, 14-steps, so say 20-feet high. Up one floor, with a skylight above us. If you are following along, so far we’re at 3-times, and we’re going up an escalator. At the top of the escalator we get…a free sandwich! No, we get asked for ID AGAIN! 20-feet and we get asked AGAIN! I can only imagine that LAX had only one or two guards at the bottom of the escalator, and numerous groups of terrorists had rapelled from helicopters through the skylight onto the escalator with large amounts of liquids over 3oz on them. Had there only been more security guards at the top of the escalator to check their ID, lord knows the horrible atrocities that could have been avoided.

Past the myriad guards, we get to screening (oh sorry, did I forget to mention this was BEFORE the security screening?). We take off our shoes…and while I’m at it, does this not seem like the stupidest thing? Like the TSA is re-active becuase clearly someone is going to try that again. What really gets me is how stupid they assume terrorists must be. No one is going to try something you are already looking for ya morons. Try thinking of the next thing someone is going to try. I can’t wait for someone to try smuggling something in the band of their underwear so we can all walk around nude, or in a wig so we can all shave our heads. Of course, then we’ll get confused with the Krishnas, but I digress….

At security the shoes come off, and all the change and the bits of foil, and anything else remotely metallic. Except the evil and insideous belt-buckle. Oh how people have tried to smuggle in the belt buckle. Its why cowboys ride horses instead of flying. Little known fact there. Anyway, I got the anal probe thingy, and was told I needed more extensive screening. “You need to go over there, sir”.

My wife has past by this point, she not being the criminal mastermind I am trying to keep my pants up. At the extra screening point, I am asked to undo my belt, lift up my shirt….and remove my pants. We’re still in the middle of the airport here….theres no little private room (”Theres no sex in the extra screening room” is a common expression I believe was made into a song) just out in the general screening area.
The extra screening guy puts on a glove, then proceeds to put his finger down the front of my pants. Yup. And then start moving it side to side like a windshield wiper. Yup, just like that. At this point, I am annoyed so I mention to the guy “You know, I generally pay $4.95 a minute for this”. Taken aback (like thats not what he does in the off-season or something to keep in shape) he motions over to a small camp of Koreans that don’t speak any english and are smiling away clearly thinking this is some sort of fun American game and says “You’ll ned to go over there, sir”.

He also motions to my wife, who as one would expect, is desperately trying to become part of the linoleum, and asks if she is with me. To this day it still is remarkable to me that she actually truthfully answered. She took all my possesions that had cleared, and was told to continue on to the flight and that I would follow, a solo walk she is now quite accustomed to doing.