My sincerest apologies to any of my Utah peeps out there, but Utah is one of my least favorite trips in my portfolio of business trips. There are very limited flight options to get there, and after all that effort to get to Utah... you end up in Utah. Not much going on in Utah.
And now that I've mentioned Utah six times, I am the current Guinness Book of World Records holder for the most number of times "Utah" has been mentioned in a 24-hour period by a single person. And now that makes seven times. My record is safe. If you went back and counted my Utah's, you are a sick individual. Especially because there are now eight mentions. Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know.
I unpack the exhausted, limp clothes from my carry on suitcase, and replace them with Utah clothes. Utah clothes look like plaid shirts and jeans. Even the clothes are disappointed to go on this trip with me, as one shirt attempts to take its life by jumping several feet from its hanger and onto the hard tiled floor in the bathroom. The only noticeable injury was a wrinkle at about mid-sleeve which could be healed later with a searing clothes iron. Next, I talk down a pair of jeans from the top ledge of my closet like a skilled hostage negotiator. "Sorry shirt and jeans, we are all in this together", I think to myself.
"What was that?" Says Tara from the next room, half asleep.
"Nothing" I reply.
It's about two o'clock in the morning, and the house is quiet (except for my loud thinking). I've explained to my sons already that daddy is going on another work trip, and I would be gone before they wake up. I also bribed them with "airport surprises" if they behave for mommy. Sage is into snow globes, and he has quite a collection from all of the cities that I've traveled to. Of course, you pay airport prices when you are at the airport, so a $4 snow globe will cost you $34.95 plus tax. I'm still paying interest on a turkey sandwich that I bought at LAX back in 1997. Just six payments left! Our youngest son, Sutter, is much easier. He gets excited about the little things that airport gift shops have to offer. Even a blinking keychain with the name "Pedro" flashing on and off would bring him hours of entertainment. Strange that the stores are always sold out of "Sutter" anything for some reason.
I've said my good-byes the night before, and the kids are deep in REM sleep. After I trap a couple of outfits into my bag, I give my half-sleeping wife a kiss, and down the stairs I go. There's nothing more invigorating in the morning than a misstep on the stairs in the dark while carrying a suitcase. Only I won't be getting out of this trip that easily. I take two or three stairs at once, watch my entire life flash before me in about a half of a second, then regain my balance. I feel like a burglar walking through the dark house. I do my best at navigating the dark house while trying not to turn on lights or making noises that might wake up the kids.
As I leave through the garage door, I reset the house alarm through a series of beeps, which causes the dog to bark. On a list of all of the helpful things that a dog can do, this would not be one of them. I tell the dog not to bark, which sends her into a frenzy of uncontrollable barking. "I said NO barking!" I yell. "Bark! Bark! Bark! Woof and Bow Wow!" she yells back from upstairs. I'm pretty sure everyone is awake at this point. I’m not going to win this argument. Tara finishes settling the argument with the dog as I walk out of the house. Bye family, I’ll see you again in a few days!
I toss my luggage into the trunk of my car like the kidnap victim that it is, and back out of the drive very nicely over the grass that just started to sprout up since the last time I drove over the grass. This driveway curve kills me... and my grass. I have nicknamed it "Dead Grass Curve". I get about half a mile from the house before getting into a heated debate with myself on whether or not I closed the rollup garage door. I do my best to convince myself that it was closed, but I'm not buying it. I drive another half a mile before I'm convinced that I'm lying about remembering that I closed the garage door. I give myself a dirty look in the rear view mirror for trying to trick myself. I drive another half a mile looking for a damn place to turn around. Three miles later, I'm pulling back into the drive only to discover that I had indeed closed the garage door, and for some reason this made me angrier with myself than if I had left it open in the first place. "I told you!" I say to myself. It was a no-win situation for sure. I stare at the door for a moment so it would be burned into my memory that the door is closed. Absolutely sure this time. I back out very carefully and smoothly drive over the grass again. Mike drives to the airport.. Take number two!
With about a half an hour of the morning now thoroughly wasted because of the garage door conflict, I'm speeding my way to the airport once again. When I arrive at the airport parking, I head directly to level 4. Yes, I see you, level 2! You can tell me that you have 25 spots available, and that each of those spots might have some hot cocoa waiting for me when I get there, but I'm not falling for it this time! I corkscrew my way up to level four, and I have my pick of nearly one hundred parking options. As I pull into a prime spot close to the elevators, I look to my left and see the large SUV hugging the spot next to mine with a virtual rainbow of car paint chips all along the edge of the car door. I pull out of the spot and look for another spot where my car wouldn't be participating in an involuntary demolition derby while I'm away. As I drive through the remaining open spots, I discover that my parking options are quickly diminishing. I saw cars parked diagonally, cars parked with their tires right on the painted line a couple of cars parked defiantly exactly in the center of two spots, and even one car somehow parked horizontally across three parking spots! I was impressed that close to one hundred a-holes could be assembled in one location all at the same time. Back to the rainbow-doored SUV I go. My only hope is that the Incredible Hulk, who must usually be the passenger that kicks the door wide open on the passenger side of this SUV, has decided to stay home. I decide that my car will just have to be a door piñata this trip.
I say a quick farewell to my car and its paint job, and head into the stink of the Philadelphia airport. Within seconds, I'm greeted by and incredibly long line of passengers that stretches well past the limits of my terrible eyesight. This was essentially a line waiting to get into the line that goes to the line for the security screening. As I stand in this trail of lost souls, I watch in amazement as newcomers attempt to walk directly to where the first segment of the line begins. It’s as though this pattern of human beings standing one behind the other happened completely by accident, or we were all just here as a welcoming committee. After about 20 minutes of slowly oozing my way to where the line would typically end, I'm about to enter a more civilized line of people that have been herded through organized stanchions connected by seat belt fabric, just as Temple Grandin first envisioned. Within the snaking queue of passengers you'll usually find airport signs along the way that display some helpful travel tips. Sometimes the signs will warn you that if you are traveling anywhere outside of North America, you are likely to die from one contagious disease or another. There is no end of flu and mosquito propaganda. Sometimes the signs will have a drawing of a mosquito with a bent needle-beak and angry eyebrows, just to add more flare to the dangers of traveling. Other signs depict a person wearing a gas mask over their face as zombie silhouettes approach the person from behind. There are also several reminders that you cannot bring any liquids through the security gate, and these signs are completely ignored by one out of every ten passengers. No, you cannot bring a bottle of water through security! I don’t care if you just paid $8 for it from the nearby gift shop, chug it down.
As you get within 20 passengers or so of the front of the line, you will find a huge Pinterest board with pictures of all of the things that are not allowed in your carryon bag. As it turns out, a hand grenade is one of those items. Who knew, right? There are also fun cartoons of other typical travel fare, like switchblades, baseball bats wrapped in barbed wired, timed C4 explosives, sniper rifles, skyrockets, Molotov cocktails (with lit rag protruding from the top), nude photographs of Bea Arthur and brass knuckles. I get a chuckle every time someone excuses themselves from the line once they get to this informative sign. I envision a full armory of confiscated weaponry in some janitor closet at the airport.
At the Philadelphia Airport, a video of Mayor Michael Nutter welcomes you to this craptastic defiance of modern engineering. If you Wikipedia Michael Nutter, you will learn that in school, his childhood "friends" used to call him the "Big Nut". That doesn't sound like a whimsical pet name that any friend that I know would give to someone. I don't think Michael Nutter has been mayor of Philadelphia since like 1988. This video is the most updated item that you will find at this airport. Wait, I forgot that there is one terminal that added a row of white rocking chairs, just in case you have some time to kill and you are looking for a place to whittle yourself something. Moonshine not included. After about the 30th loop of this video of the former mayor, I'm about ready to throw myself on any of the confiscated hand grenades that have been discarded into the plastic garbage can conveniently located next to the x-ray machine.
I actually feel myself getting older while I stand in this line. I have run out of interesting and not so interesting things to look at. I start making backstories for some of the folks standing in the line around me. The guy in front of me is heading to a sock puppet convention in Sweden, and has packed his entire suitcase full of mismatched socks, courtesy of a ravenous clothes dryer. The elderly couple to the side of me are fleeing the country after an FBI probe into their counterfeit Girl Scout cookie syndicate. The twenty-something guy three people ahead of me carrying the violin case is in a romantic race to violin his way back into the heart of his high school sweetheart, who abruptly left for Uruguay to marry someone at sundown that she just met on the internet. And the lady directly behind me enjoys ramming her suitcase into the heels of the person in front of her. That last one isn't so much a backstory as it is a current event. I have memorized the former mayor's "welcome to the Philadelphia airport" speech, and I think I would vote for him. He has a way in which he makes this Philadelphia s%%%hole sound like an exotic international getaway.
I think a mandatory IQ test during the ticketing process would solve most of the issues that cause the security line to move slowly. As I get closer to the TSA person that is checking identifications to boarding passes, I'm amazed by how many people are completely taken by surprise at the request for these two simple items. It’s as though they are participating in the closing credits of "Let's Make A Deal", and they are being asked to produce a random household item like a paperclip, or a 1976 copper penny. People, you have had over 30 minutes to make these two items available! Why would your boarding pass be somewhere in the middle of your suitcase??! Trust me when I say that I've walked up to this podium hundreds of times, and they have only ever asked me for a boarding pass, and my identification.
For this reason, I have my identification tucked snugly inside a pouch on the back of my phone, and on my phone screen I have my digital boarding pass queued up and ready for inspection as soon as I'm about five passengers from the font of the line. This is effective and efficient, and keeps this ridiculous line moving.
"Next!" the guard announces, as he locks eyes on me. I immediately hand him my identification, and hold my phone just above the bacteria covered glass of the scanner. I hear a sound that could only mean wrong answer, or some other bad sound effect. Invalid boarding pass?
"But this can't be, I just downloaded the boarding pass this morning from the airline app".
"Yeah, a few other people had the same problem earlier." I stand and await some sort of solution, which I thought for sure would follow the part in which he informed me that this problem happened earlier in the morning. A staring match ensued. In the interest of time, I blink and await some sort of reaction. Nothing.
"And... what did we end up doing with those people?" I ask.
"What people?" he said, unf####-ingbelievably.
"The people with the same problem as me. Remember how you were just talking about them? You know, with the boarding passes that didn't scan?"
Objection, leading the witness, your honor. I assume that my reply was enough of a hint to help take him back an entire 2 minutes to the beginning of our four lines of conversation. So Dory the TSA agent was able to recall from his memory banks the people with the same unfortunate circumstance as myself from earlier in the morning. It turns out, he was also as unhelpful then as he continued to be in the present. "Oh, I sent them back to the airline check-in downstairs."
"Ok, so here's the problem that I see," I said, "My plane is going to begin boarding in 30 minutes, and this line takes roughly 45 minutes to get to the point where I get to see you." I could see the numbers tumbling around in his head, so I help with the math. "45 minutes is longer than 30 minutes." I say as politely as you can make sarcasm sound.
"Well," He says, "I guess what you could do is go down to the airline desk, get your printed boarding pass, and then come back up to the front of this line to me. I'll remember you, so it will be fine."
I'm now hauling my bags through the corridor, and to the escalators. Of course both of these escalators are going up for some reason, and I needed to go down. I find a set of stairs which I was able to drag my bags down, and head over to the self-service kiosk so I can get a printed boarding pass. The kiosks were suspiciously available. I glance over at the extremely long line of passengers that are waiting to be checked in by a human being. An airline representative watches me struggle with the kiosk for several minutes, as I try various spellings of my name since the correct spelling didn't bring up my flight information.
"Can I help you with something?"
"Yes, I'm typing my name in here and my boarding pass isn't coming up."
"Oh, that's because our system is down due to the airline merger. You'll need to wait in the line to the right."
First of all, why would you just watch me walk up to a non-functioning kiosk and let me attempt to navigate through the screens for four or five minutes without telling me the thing doesn't work? And secondly, ain't nobody got time for this crazy line on top of waiting in another crazy line upstairs.
"They just sent me down here from security to get a new boarding pass. I already waited in that line upstairs, and my plane starts boarding in less than 30 minutes."
"It's always a good rule of thumb to get to the airport at least two hours before your flight."
Touché, I had no loaded response for this magnitude of smartasstical brilliance. I like this guy. Well done, sir! Once he realized I had been shut down, and his work here was complete, he slowly turns and walks back towards the massive line of angry passengers that he would also not be helpful to.
Defeated, I drag my carry-on along with my pride to the back of this new line, and begin searching for alternate flight options using my cell phone. To my surprise, Mr. Two-Hours-Before-Your-Flight walks up to me and asks that I follow him up to the front desk to get my boarding pass situation straightened out. Either he felt that we were kindred sarcastic spirits, or he was just appreciative of the fact that I didn't flip out on him like I'm sure a few dozen people already had. I get an escort to one of the empty desks up in the front, which also housed a vacant computer keyboard.
"Wait right here." he commands, and then proceeds to walk away from me, and continues until he is out of my terrible eyesight. He had to have walked at least twenty, or even hundreds, of feet. And so there I stood, and nothing was happening. Agents a few desks away were busy pecking away at their keyboards, and peeling off passengers from the line. I make eye contact several times with them all, but not one even hinted at helping me. Another ten minutes spin by on my watch. Wow, this Two-Hours-Before-Your-Flight guy got me again! I stand there laughing to myself like a lunatic. Finally a small door which leads to the Emerald City behind this empty desk opens up, and a travel wizard emerges to assist me. Within about 3 clicks of the mouse, I was heading back upstairs with a crisp new boarding pass that I had an undecided level of confidence in.
I head back to the line and excuse myself through the crowd. I get about halfway to the front when I hear a voice sternly remind me where the back of the line was located, which as it turns out, is located at the back of the very line that I was walking through. It was suggested to me that I identify the person that was at the end of the line, and then position myself directly behind that person. I turned to find where the voice was coming from, and found that it was another TSA agent. I explained what had happened, and that I was told by the other TSA agent to bring my new boarding pass directly up to him without waiting in line. He asks me to follow him, and gives me an escort up to the front, where I find a very different looking TSA agent than the one that told me to come back with the new boarding pass.
"This guy says that you told him to cut to the front like an asshole." (I added the asshole part there, since it was implied.)
"No, I didn't tell anyone to do that."
And so the guy that told me to cut in front of 45 minutes’ worth of angry travelers had failed to let me know that he was not going to be there when I come back! This was a well-orchestrated effort to drive me bat-s%%% crazy. The rest of this conversation is a blur, and I think at some point I had offered cash and a bottle of cologne from my suitcase if I could just be on my way to the next line.
Surprisingly, the guard scans my boarding pass, and I see a green glow and hear a much happier beep from the device. I was told to keep to the right as I head towards the line for the x-ray machine. I also have this part down to a science. I approach with absolutely nothing in my pockets, belt around my waist removed, and laptop bag already unzipped so that I can snatch my computer from my bag and set it inside its own tray all in one motion. I watch as my bag and my laptop slowly disappear into the dark tunnel of the x-ray machine. I follow the trail of sweaty footprints into the body scanner, and told in a gruff voice to put my feet on each of the yellow feet decals, which they already were. Once I exit, I’m held up by the second guard, who then says that he needs to touch me. He pretty much left the explanation at that, and if I hadn’t been patted down one out of every five times I go through this thing, I would think that what he just said was a little inappropriate. After ensuring that the cuffs on the arms of my shirt didn’t pose a threat to anyone, I walk over to the conveyor belt to retrieve my belongings.
I see that my bag and my shoes are there waiting for me already, and as the tray that contained my laptop emerges into the light from the end of the tunnel, it is quickly snatched by the woman that was working the x-ray screen. She brings the tray back to the beginning of the tunnel, and runs the tray through again. Once again, she grabs the tray as it exits the x-ray machine, only this time, she walks it back over to her seat, and sets the tray containing my laptop on a small table, and continues watching bags on the screen. After a few moments, She mumbles something unintelligible that I assumed was meant to sound something like "Bag check." A couple of minutes jog by, and my time window to board my flight begins to close on me.
"Excuse me?" I say timidly, not meaning to distract her efforts in thwarting terrorism.
Without missing a beat, she barks back "They will be over to check your bag as soon as they aren't busy."
"Sorry, I don't mean to be a pain in the ass, but I'm not sure if they heard you call for a bag check."
"They heard me." She snaps back.
Two X-ray machines away, a distinct and purposeful "Bag Check!" Is called out, and a TSA agent immediately runs over to assist.
"Perhaps you could call them over again?" I say like a complete idiot with no apparent common sense.
"You'll just need to wait, sir!"
She hit me with the "Sir" response, which is short for "a-hole". I step further back from the conveyor, and a few inches closer to my laptop tray. She throws a stare my way which freezes me in my tracks. My attempt at telekinesis on my laptop or even hypnosis on this TSA woman fell incredibly short of success. I check my phone and I see that my plane has been boarding now for 5 minutes. A bead of sweat slides down my face.
In complete desperation, I formulate in my mind what this woman might sound like if she were to shout something. And so, with my head lowered as to avoid suspicion, in my deepest voice I shout “Bag Check!”
It sounded like a great plan in my head at the time, and it did get someone to come over finally. In fact, I got a lot of somebodies to come over. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t recommend doing this.
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