The Horseshoe and the Frenzied Man

There were only two of us riding the shuttle bus from the parking lot to the airport. We sat in silence, not really regarding each other until we hit traffic.  Predicably, the rain was rendering things unnecessarily chaotic out on the roads.

"Did I hear you say you were going to terminal 5?" the man asked me.

"Nope. 2."

"That's a shame. Was hoping we could take the shortcut."

The greater Los Angeles airport is in the shape of a horseshoe. You go in on one side, pass by each terminal sequentially and exit the other side. Ideally, the left lanes are supposed to flow allowing cars to quickly get to their terminal. This being LA, the ideal is usually never achieved so the horseshoe seems to be congested an awful lot.

There is one remedy for the airport's traffic and that is a cut through connecting terminals 2 and 5.  It's a mercifully brilliant feature that has saved the sanity of many a frenzied traveler.  The thng is that you only get one shot at it because once you've passed it by, you are commited to traveling the entire horseshoe.

It became obvious what this guy was getting at. He was doing that airport math when you're running late for a flight where you calculate every possible second to in order guess just how completely screwed you are. The man looked slightly pale and leaned forward in his seat, unable to relax in the slightest. He must have been running very late.

My head had been burried in my Blackberry so when I looked up, I couldn't tell where we were in the shoe because of the cars on every side of the shuttle. So I asked the driver if we had passed the shortcut. He said that we had not. I instructed the driver to drop me off. I'd walk the 100 yards to my terminal so he could attempt to get this guy to his plane on time.  It would mean the driver would have to very quickly make his way across four crowded lanes, but hwhat sired me that he could do it.

"Good luck," I said to the stranger as I grabbed my stuff and hopped off the bus.

As I watched them drive off, I hoped to myself that he would make it.

Traditions

If you've noticed it's been rather quiet around here, it's because I'm getting into my busy season again. As a result, I've been doing a lot of traveling. I've realized that there are some very specific things I do when I travel. I call them traditions, but they very well could be a product of neurosis.

Here is a list of things I must do when traveling on a plane:

Always call WonderWife™ before getting on the flight.

Must email a picture of the plane I am about to get on to WW™, so she can show it to the kids. (A picture of me sitting inside the plane is optional, but appreciated.)

Must touch the outside of the plane as I board. (I have no idea of the origin of this or why I do it.)

As soon as possible, open up the airline magazine in the front pocket and check what will be the in flight movie, regardless if I am watching it or not.

Upon approaching landing, count down from 10 trying to time "1" with the wheels touching down. If the count is early, continue to count back up to 10 until the wheels touch down. If sitting next to loved one, such as wife or child, whisper the count to them. Prepare to be mocked by wife if the count is off by more than 1.

Unbuckle seat beat while taxiing to the terminal. Why?  I don't need your rules, man!

Much Ado About Nothing?

Despite getting worked up about airport security, both legs of my trip were using old school scanners. The new scanners were in place, but dormant in Ft. Lauderdale. In fact, a TSA agent told us that when they do use them they don't put small kids in them--not because of safety, but because "kids can't keep still for 10 seconds."

As result, WonderWife™ and I were left with a lot of displaced anger. We had whipped up a nice frothy head of agitation in the days leading to our trip. I decided to take mine out on Florida drivers, whom I've come to realize over the years are just about the most inconsiderate in the country. I'm not sure how WW™ ultimately coped. Maybe that's why she was "accidentally" kicking me in the middle of the night.

So at the end of it all, we survived a grand total of 11 hours in airplanes, 4 hours in terminals, 7 hours in the car, two great-grandparents, 2 grandparents, 2 siblings, 2 spouses and 4 kids under 5.

I still contend that the TSA thing is a big issue that will continue to be hashed out both publicly and privately, but for now I've got to shake off the tryptophan coma and let go of my dreams of my mom's candied sweet potatoes and get back to my normal life.

Scanners

It didn’t dawn on me that our annual Thanksgiving family trek across the country would be more difficult this year until WonderWife™ brought it up.

“What are your thoughts on the new airport scanners?” she asked me one morning over breakfast.

She was referring to the new TSA full body scanners that bounce x-rays off the body in order to take a full, revealing image of airline passengers. Many people are up in arms over the invasion of privacy. Passengers can forgo the scanner, but are then subjected to a rigorous pat down that is reported to be so invasive, some who have gone through it are threatening to sue for sexual misconduct.

Personally, it’s not the the picture that bothers me. I don’t care if there’s some anonymous image of the outline of my stuff in some back room of an airport. I’m sure out there somewhere there is clear footage of me picking me nose while speeding along the freeway. What gets me is the safety issue and how it affects my kids.

The TSA says they’ve done studies and the findings show that there is “minimal risk” from the machines. Depending on whom you listen to the scanners give anywhere from one thousandth to one fiftieth the amount of radiation one would receive from a standard chest x-ray.

I want to believe that these machines are safe, but the cynical part of me doesn’t know if I should be so sure. Airport security has been a frustrating joke over the last decade. Our government’s reaction, over-reaction and sensitivity to any threat to national security have only made things worse. Its like they don’t really know how to keep us safe, but they’re really good at making it look like they’re keeping us safe.

In September 2001, I was working at a building where there was a security booth to the entrance of the building’s parking lot. Employees had company-issued ID cards that granted us access to the facility. After the shock of 9/11 wore away and the panic set in, security got tight. Suddenly our ID cards weren’t enough. We had to show photo IDs while the guards used mirrors to check under our cars. What used to take anywhere from 15 seconds to 2 minutes to enter the lot would now take 30 to 45 minutes.

This was back in the pre-kid days when I actually worked out instead of making excuses why I couldn’t. I showered at the gym and would drape my towel over the front seat of my car so it wouldn’t get all funky inside my gym bag, which I placed on the front seat. As a result, the bag would end up being covered by the towel. Despite all of the newly installed “security measures” at the building, not once did the guards ever ask to see what was under the lump that was obscured by the towel in the front seat of my car. If I had wanted to do damage to that facility, it would have been laughably easy. It incensed me that all of the security that was eating up precious time was all for show.

I find myself thinking about this whenever I’m queued up in the terminal, shoes and belt in hand, pants sagging, digging through my bags to fish out my electronics. I realize that there are real stakes when it comes to airport security. I would be naive to think that there isn't a need for it. However, from the vantage point of the average passenger, modern airport security seems like it’s all defense and no offense. It can also be frustratingly inconsistent from location to location. I can't help but stand there in line wondering how much of it is like the security of my former workplace—just for show.

The new big, scary scanners aren’t helping. They make a bold statement about the lengths being taken to keep us safe, but are they really safe? Was the old system so flawed that we have to go to these measures? Or are we being asked to trade our health for perceived safety? There’s no way to be sure that sometime in the future these machines won’t be found to be bad for us. It wasn't too long ago that people thought cigarettes were ok.

This is really the crux of my problem—it boils down to the safety of my kids. I care less about x-rays bouncing off my middle aged skin, but how will it affect my young children? It feels like us parents are facing a Sophie’s choice this holiday season: Do we expose our children and ourselves, both literally and figuratively, to potentially harmful rays? WonderWife™ and I strongly believe that the alternative—having our kids fondled by some bored TSA agent in rubber gloves—is actually more harmful.

There are people who say that the solution is not to fly. But that’s incredibly impractical when you live 3000 miles away from your closest family and only have a scant few days off in which to see them. It’s a shortsighted solution that would rob my kids of their grandparents and cousins. Sadly, the TSA and the airlines know that we passengers don’t have any other choice and they don’t seem to be making it any easier on any of us.

But they put on a good show, don’t they?

The All-Nighter(s)

It was an unusual trip in that I had to stay up all night for three nights in a row. Surprisingly, it wasn’t so bad. My mind was engaged and the time went quickly. It’s much easier to pull an all-nighter when you know there will be opportunity to sleep on the other side. When I was single (and younger) there was nothing to keep me awake after staying out all night. But kids are like an alarm clock without a snooze bar, so when I’m up late these days I’m constantly and unavoidably doing the sleep math—if I go home now, I’ll only be “this” tired. Knowing that I had opportunity to catch 7 hours this time left me stress free about whittling away the wee hours.

It’s a bizarre thing to live against the flow of the natural rhythms of the world. After the first night, my body felt heavy and thick, as if I were walking on tub of oobleck. The night gives a calm, eerie stillness to the world that can be unsettling at first, but sort of liberating once you get used to it. I started thinking about what other people were up with me—the insomniacs watching infomercials or the young couples passionately sweating the night away. Where were the people going who were driving on the roads at 4am?

Thankfully, daylight savings time had passed so it was still dark when I got back to my hotel. I detest going to sleep after the sun has come up. Even in the party days of yore I always have, though I don’t know why. So each morning was a race to seal off my hotel room and drift to sleep before the first rays of light peeked around the gaps in the window shade. I imagined this is what a vampire must feel like.

-----------------

As I was packing up on my last morning, the phone rang. WonderWife™ was crying. A mechanical problem grounded her plane and the throngs of spring breakers made getting another flight to Florida impossible. Everyone was disappointed. The Bean didn’t get to take his plane ride, WW™ didn’t get to attend her grandma’s 85th birthday party and I didn’t get my weekend of solitude. Sprout remained indifferent to our plight, as long as somebody was feeding her mashed bananas and Cheerios every few hours. We collectively cursed the airlines and drunken college students.

With our plans now shattered, I decided that we couldn’t loaf around the house all weekend. We needed to do something as a family, something fun to keep us from wallowing in the thoughts of the weekend we were all supposed to be having.

I texted WW™, “How about we got to Disneyland this weekend?”

Since WW™ has still reeling from her less-than-pleasant experience to and from the airport, I wasn’t sure how she was going to take this suggestion. When she gets stressed, my wife gets tunnel vision and can usually only focus on one thing at a time. I braced my sleep-deprived body for her reaction. Theme parks were my thing. Would she see this as a selfish request?

The phone rang.

“You just made my day,” she said. “That is an excellent suggestion.”

Leaving (Maybe) On a Jet Plane

A few months ago, my sister invited the Bean and I to Chicago to visit for my niece’s second birthday. The idea being to give Jules a much needed weekend to herself before the baby comes and to give the Bean a chance to bond with his cousin. I accepted.

It soon dawned on me that this trip meant that I would be his only parent for three days. It also meant that we would be spending a total of 9 hours together on a plane. Previous to this trip, the most consecutive time I’ve spent solo with the kid is a few hours. It would be a true test of my parenting skills. Turns out, not quite in the way I expected.

To say that I was groggy when I woke up on Friday morning at 4:30am would be an understatement. The nervousness and excitement of the trip rendered me sleepless. The same could not be said of the boy, who popped awake instantly, ready to go.

“Airplane,” he said brightly. “See the pilot."

The thing about the Bean is that he never stops talking from the moment he wakes up till the moment he goes to sleep. This is totally acceptable behavior every other time than 5 in the morning after 4 hours of sleep.

We arrived at the airport an hour before our flight to find the place a madhouse. When we got to the ticket booth, I was informed that we had missed the 45 minute cut off and that we would not be boarding our plane. I had never heard of this rule and asked to speak to a manager. I was introduced to a big stone slab of a woman who clicked on her keyboard for an impossibly long time before reiterating what the previous woman had said. Our only options were to fly standby on the next flight, which was three hours later. If that didn’t work, we could get on the flight after that, which was four hours after the second flight. We had a limited time in Chicago as it was, so a later flight wasn’t going to work. Besides, there was still 45 minutes before our flight was to take off. I played the single parent card and asked this woman to look at my child and help us out. Nothing. I screamed. Again nothing. Giving up, I opted for standby.

At the security checkpoint, TSA made the Bean give up his Smushie (tiny security blanket) so that it could be scanned. The kid started to cry when I pulled it from his hands. It was a stupid and pointless request and I was angry with the guard for making my kid upset, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. With 10 minutes left until our original flight was scheduled to take off, we raced to the gate and I gave the whole deal to the attendant. He clicked on his keyboard for a few minutes than quickly ushered us through the door to the jetway. Our bags were going to be flying two hours behind us, but at least we were on our original flight. I wished for a sudden illness to hit the cold-hearted woman downstairs who told me that it was impossible for us to get on our original flight.

On the plane, the Bean was a total rock star. Good thing too, between only getting a few hours sleep and the ordeal at the airport, I’m not sure I would have been able to handle it if he wasn’t.

I wish I could say that my troubles with American Airlines were over at that point. They weren’t. The woman at the baggage department was even less friendly and less helpful than Ms. Stoneface at LAX. She quickly arranged to have the bags sent to my sister’s house (at my expense) before picking up her purse and vanishing into the backroom. At 9pm that night, I spent a half an hour on the phone with some lady trying to find out where my bags were. An hour later, I was driving back to the airport hoping my bags would be there. Thankfully, they were. At least I didn't have to pay for them to be delivered. (Someday my son is going to be very upset at me for dressing him in his cousin's pink and purple pajamas.)

I was prepared for the worst flying 2000 miles with a toddler. But I never would have imagined I would get more trouble from the airlines than from the Bean.

I promise that the story gets happier. More to come…