\u00e2\u20ac\u0153May I see your hands, please?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Good grief! Is she coming on to me? I thought.<\/p>\n
Instead, she rubbed what looked like a small, damp orange Wet One across my palms. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Now turn around.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I did so, my anxiety increasing. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I meant \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcturn your hands around.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I did that too. So the backs and the palms got swabbed, but what for? We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get into that later.<\/p>\n
The woman, who used a line I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t heard since Sadie Hawkins dances at Immaculate Conception School, spoke with a kind of eastern European accent. By her nametag, I could tell she was one of an army of Transportation Security Administration workers who keep our skies and passengers safe. The Sadie Hawkins allusion is what some girls in high school used to say when they wanted someone to hold their hands. Most of us didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hold hands on the first date, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a topic for a future column.<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
Jet-lagged after a recent 10-hour flight from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Washington, D.C., my wife and I were feted, along with hundreds of other travelers, from Munich and Vienna, to passport-and-baggage inspection at JFK Airport.<\/p>\n
The minute our planes landed, we got ushered into a large area with miles of mazes, where we needed to make our way through many stiles. If we had goods to declare, that was another series of lines to navigate.<\/p>\n
The only thing my family declared was that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d appreciate more simplicity to the process. While this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily a screed against security procedures, I believe things would go more smoothly if signs were better marked and if people simply explained things.<\/p>\n
There appear to be three main types of TSA officers, each group friendlier than the rest. The first group has graduated with highest honors by mastering the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s keep the line moving, Sir!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d specialty. An even friendlier group cut its teeth on, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I told you, sir, you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And the third has memorized the spiel that declares: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Only one person at a time\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but reverses that with, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a family, you stay together.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Though traveling to Scandinavia to see our son, daughter-in-law and new granddaughter makes the trip worthwhile, car travel certainly seems a lot more appealing in light of the whip-out-your-passport-and-a-picture-ID regimen hundreds of us followed. Apparently, every plane that lands on American soil requires another pat-down, interrogation, baggage inspection, regardless of what security officers did on the other side of the Atlantic, in our case, Copenhagen.<\/p>\n
The only difference we noted is that we got to keep our shoes on before boarding a SAS flight toward America. In Washington, off came the shoes. Understandably, some passengers are grumpy. On our flight, well, we were unable to land at JFK due to a storm. Not all us passengers were aware that the pilot had been circling the airport for 45 minutes, prompting many of us to wonder, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why is it taking us so long to reach the airport?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we seen that same building several times already?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Aware that we had another plane to catch, to Albuquerque, we got to listen to the announcement that we were flying to Baltimore for more fuel. More time waiting for permission to land, more time waiting for the refueling. But somehow, we lost less than two hours in that leg of the trip.<\/p>\n
Then the fun at security began. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been visiting in line with a Dallas resident, a woman originally from Sweden, traveling with three small kids. I liked her accent. Of the hundreds in line, I was selected for the hands check.<\/p>\n
The attendant then placed the moist pad under some kind of monitor and apparently came up with nothing. She let me continue through the line without even probation or community service.<\/p>\n
The Swedish travel-mate, right behind me, also got her hands rubbed and scrubbed. But why? We hesitated to inquire into the nefarious conspiracies that might be ferreted out by detecting something in our DNA.<\/p>\n
An explanation would have helped. We didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see the genial security worker swab any other hands. She chose only two people: us. Do we look like terrorists?<\/p>\n
People doing passport and baggage checks don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t inquire about passengers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 connections. We had two hours between our arrival in Washington and our boarding a plane to Albuquerque. So how long did the inspection last? Two hours.<\/p>\n
An aspect of the Peter Principle that ought to be added is that a late passenger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gate is always going to be the farthest away from the main terminal. We checked the board and discovered our flight had been changed to a Gate 32 in the C terminal. Remember, with struggling gaits, we needed to make our way for what seemed like miles.<\/p>\n
We checked again. Oh, this time it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Terminal D, Gate 32. The gates there are not spread out hub-like but sequential. So after crossing all 32 gates of the first terminal, we resumed the march, Gate 1, Gate 2\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. We arrived late, but the storm left early, so we were able to hop our original flight.<\/p>\n
Now, as for the time: When flying west, chasing the sun, we gain hours on the clock. In our case, including the side trip to Baltimore, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been in the plane for 10 hours, and although Washington clocks showed 8 p.m., our body clocks registered closer to 2 a.m.<\/p>\n
Although transportation marathons such as this one make car travel appear quite appealing, there are some plusses to flying, and in fairness, I must say many airport and airline personnel were extremely courteous.<\/p>\n
When we arrived overseas on July 20, a woman checking passports greeted us with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Welcome to Denmark.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And her counterpart at JFK said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Welcome back.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153May I see your hands, please?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Good grief! Is she coming on to me? I thought. Instead, she rubbed what looked like a small, damp orange Wet One across my palms. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Now turn around.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I did so, my anxiety increasing. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I meant \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcturn your hands around.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I did that too. So the backs and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}