Maybe my greying mustache and my already-greyed hair make me look more presentable to personnel with the Transportation Safety Administration at major U.S. and foreign airports. I say “maybe” because it seems I was hassled less than ever before on this go-round to Iceland.

There are a few perks to passing the age-75 barrier: People my age and older don’t need to remove their shoes when passing through that scanners that check for strange objects. I don’t consider that such an honor, but merely a way to show up my wife, Bonnie, who has one more shoe-removing routine to undergo, before she reaches the Big Five-Oh.

Except for Icelandic Airlines’ mistakenly shipping my bag to Seattle and not returning it until we arrived home, the trip went well. One gets used to washing out clothes each night.

After my retirement from teaching, in 1999, I’ve captured myriad incidents that I hadn’t expected. This column is not intended to serve as a travelogue, but merely as a way to highlight some of the silly and not-so-silly incidents visited on a person (me), who for quite a while asked myself, “Self, do I look like a terrorist?”

In no particular order, here are a few encounters with airport officials that have made me wonder whether I’d ever make it home again:

Our first flight of any distance was after my retirement, when we flew to Belize. We landed in San Pedro, a sleepy town their Chamber calls a place where people don’t need or wear shoes. Our weeklong stay there made us marvel as how everything went as planned. There was no mix-up in room assignment or in fees, or in getting cash from an ATM, no bullying T.S.A. personnel or anything else.

Naturally, we assumed all air travel would be the same as the Central American experience, but we erred.

Serious travelers aren’t supposed to fall asleep in bus depots. When we landed in Madrid, countless hours of staying awake finally came home to roost. (I used that pathetic mixed metaphor to illustrate my state of somnolence when we arrived at the Madrid airport). We’d run into fellow Las Vegans Ermie and Corrine Martinez, who nudged me as I sprawled on a bench, barely even able to remember whence we’d arrived. We located a cab that took us to a town appropriately called Trujillo. The driver joked with us, then told me I speak funny after telling us the fare would be about thincuenta (not cincuenta) dolares. I’d forgotten that Madrileños speak Castilian Spanish.

Our stop at he baggage claim area didn’t thrill us, as we failed to locate my suitcase. Airport personnel apologized and explained, “It should arrive in two or three days.” Meanwhile, I shopped for a couple of shirts and walking shorts, but everything was too small for me.

Without having met every Spaniard on the planet, I’m still convinced the people (part of MY heritage) are indeed small, and certainly not overweight.

The largest adult on the flight to Spain, an elderly classmate, happened to have a spare outfit, which he loaned me. The summer in Spain was part of a for-credit course offered by Highlands University.

It’s customary for airports to sniff out anyone who conceivably would pose a threat. I understand and agree with the need to make sure everyone is safe. But in our case, on the way back home, the person who’d loaned me the clothes hollered out, just as I entered the area where we get poked, pinched, prodded and probed, “Art, where did you hide the gun?”

That did not go over smoothly but through some careful explanations from our class sponsors, we got through without serving jail time.

Leaving our Madrid hotel in a hurry, I missed breakfast and instead stuffed an orange into my camera case. When we arrived in Miami, a dog that looked as if he’d come straight out of the “Peanuts” comic strip parked on my camera case. Politely, an airport official told us that transferring that kind of item from one airport to another is illegal. And he kept my orange.

Our travels have presented other activities that too often are visited on the unsuspecting. For example, our son Adam, who was traveling with us for his first trip to Seattle to join Microsoft, had bought an expensive set of tools to repair and adjust computers. But because some of the tools — still secured in their original case — “might have pointy tips,” he needed to surrender them.

That makes one wonder why airports, such as the Albuquerque Sunport, don’t have a series of lockers to store things like tools, until the owner can reclaim them.

Over the years, we have become accustomed to various routines that make it easier to get through customs. Our last trip, to Iceland, only last month, was one of them. After about 10 days on that frozen island, we were fatigued and eager to board our plane back to Denver, one of the few western U.S. cities with a direct flight to Iceland’s capital, Reakjavik.

Our son and his family had met us in Iceland. We toured the island for several days. But the departure times were 12 hours apart. So we dawdled in the Reakjavik airport for hours. On checking in, I thought it was fitting that my wife herself got pulled aside and interrogated: How long were you in Iceland? Where are you from? What was your business in Iceland? Did you bring any fruits or vegetables to this airport? Can you name three zoos in your hometown?

Well, for once, I thought justice had been served, as Bonnie finally got chosen to answer the questions. I’m wondering if I.C.E. and T.S.A. personnel thought Bonnie might even be flattered over the attention she received.

Either way, having her answering questions about the Icelandic visit gave me a needed respite.

Except for measureable rainfall almost every day, the weather in Iceland was much like what we left in Las Vegas.