BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

…just to be the man who ate a cheese-burr-gerrrrrrr.

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Okay… I know, I know… Enough with massacring the Proclaimer’s tune… They sing it way better than I do anyway.

So, I ran my mouth about my recent travel experience to and from Ohio, nothing new about that. I run my mouth all the time. But, there are a couple of other things I also did this go around.

The first is, I filled out the online questionnaire the airline kept harping about. Usually I don’t do that sort of stuff because I simply don’t have the time, but I figured what the hell.

Now here’s the thing. I did NOT piss and moan. Well, not much… After all, I had already written the 4 part blog about the trip and put the posts into the queue for deployment, so all of my pissing and moaning was pretty much finished. Anywho, to be honest I actually gave them a pretty good review. I even lauded praise upon a gate agent at Chicago O’Hare for her professional handling of a sticky situation with a young pilot who in my opinion was in need of an anger management class. I mean, adults generally don’t throw screaming fit temper tantrums when they don’t get their way – especially in front a terminal full of people… But then, maybe that’s just the way I see things, and we all know I see things differently than most…

But back to that online thing… When the questions got around to asking if I was delayed for more than 15 minutes on any particular flight/connection, I told the truth and said yes.

I honestly don’t know if it was my answers on the questionnaire, or something that the airline took it upon themselves to do simply because they are wonderful people. I’m inclined to believe it is option #1, but at any rate, I received the following in the mail:

Since Ms. Elizabeth Reed, General Manager of Customer Care for NWA was so kind as to send this, I figured that since I had pretty much blasted them – in my own tongue in cheek fashion, of course – via Brainpan Leakage, I should be fair about things and point out that they did in fact apologize, and even gave me an extra 1000 miles on my frequent flyer account.

That’s actually more than I can say for some of the other airlines I have flown.

Now I just need someplace to go. I wonder how far 1000 frequent flyer miles will get me? Of course, if I redeem them and the airplane has an auxiliary power unit malfunctioning, no air conditioning, and instead of sending someone to Sears for a DieHard battery the pilot bribes some guys in yellow vests and earmuffs to give us a jump, just as soon as they can find where they stashed the cables, I think I might have to scream.

But, not in front of a terminal full of people.

The second thing I did involved a hamburger… Well, a cheeseburger to be precise. As you well know, in the installment titled You Want Blonde Or Brunette On That, I took some more of my tongue in cheek pot shots – or in this case slapshots –  at the restaurant chain, Fuddruckers. I won’t go into euphemistic details about my experience there, after all I did just that in the aforementioned post.

The thing that triggered me doing the thing, so to speak – (hey, fancy word usage… that’s why I get paid the big bucks) – was the fact that so many of you took me to task… Well, actually only one of you took me to task (yes, you George) Still, a huge number of you either commented here, on Facebook, or even sent me a direct email to tell me how absolutely wonderful Fuddruckers truly is, and that my experience must have been an isolated incident. Y’all also went on to tell me that I should file a complaint with the corporate office.

Well, I ruminated on that a bit, and while it’s something I don’t normally do, I surfed on by Fuddruckers.com and found their feedback form. I sent them a comment letting them know about my experience, and that I was only doing such because several of my readers had urged me to do so.

Now they are mad at all of you…

Just kidding. Kinda.

But, seriously, within something around 36 hours I received an email from the corporate office, thanking me for the feedback and letting me know it had been forwarded on to the appropriate store. Less than 8 hours after that I received a very nice apology email from the manager of the store in question, and she is sending me a gift card.

I have to say that kind of integrity out of a company is pretty damned impressive. At least, to me it is, because that hasn’t always been my experience with some other chains. If you don’t know which one I’m talking about search my blog for “square hamburgers are evil” and see what you find.

So anyway, next time I’m on the road and have a layover while making a connection – I mean, you simply cannot fly anywhere these days without making a connection in some faraway place, we’ve already established that – I’ll be keeping my eye out for a Fuddruckers. I’m really looking forward to finally having that truly stellar hunk-o-seared-moo-cow on a bun that E K waxed droolific about so many years ago.

And yes, you too, George… 😉

More to come…

Murv

I’d like to take a moment to point something out to everyone. As I mentioned in the first installment of this little travelogue, I have a blast every single time I visit Heather and the gang at Violet Flame Gifts (VFG). No two ways about it, and this time was no different. Great folks, great food, great time had by all. If you are ever in the area you owe it to yourself to visit VFG, or even swing by their website. They truly are amazing.

However, I think you will all agree that me going on and on about what a great time I had is nowhere near as funny as me twisting off about the silliness that occurred getting there… And, as you will soon see, back home…

As is the custom, Saturday night at VFG after a successful store event involves a party. Much food, in this particular case some killer BBQ’d ribs along with all the trimmings prepared by Grillmaster Max, and much alcohol to wash said food down your gullet. And, as is the custom, I usually imbibe enough to be the beneficiary in receipt of at least a mild hangover the next day. No exception this time, although the hangover was probably the mildest I’d ever had in my life. It was really just one of those “oogly” feelings as opposed to the standard day after maladies.

And so, late Sunday morning, following a killer brunch prepared by Devin and the gang, we were off to the Columbus airport. Our goodbyes said, Dorothy Morrison and I checked in our luggage, grabbed our boarding passes, and headed for the security checkpoint.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I am dependent upon a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine when I sleep, and following suggested protocol I always transport it in my carry-on. These days, due to the heightened security, CPAP’s and I am sure many other medical devices as well, have become the bane of a traveler’s existence. It seems that someone decided such devices required an extra round of testing whenever presented at airport security. This always means that I end up standing off to the side while they swab, inspect, detect, look over, test, and otherwise run my machine through a mass spectrometer. While this takes a few extra minutes each time I check in, it has never been a major problem.

Until Columbus…

My first indication that something was up came while I was stuffing my feet back into my shoes. Instead of the friendly chirp usually emitted by the test equipment, my ears were pierced with an angry electronic squeal, followed by the surprised voice of the five foot nothing TSA agent wielding the swab.

“Sir, we’ve had a hit on your CPAP machine.”

I was equally surprised in some respects, but in others, not so much. I mean, after all, a CPAP is a little air pump with filters in it. It sucks in air on one end, and then blows it back out on the other. It’s bound to pick up some manner of foreign particulate of some sort at some point. It just stands to reason.

I finished putting on my shoe and said, “Okay. So what do we do now?”

She didn’t hear me because she was too busy putting herself on instantaneous red alert since I was obviously some sort of terrorist or something. Seconds after she began shouting and waving, a whole host of blue shirted para-military rent-a-cops descended upon me as if I was Bin Laden himself. I began to wonder just exactly what their million dollar spectrometer had told them my CPAP contained.

Not wanting to be tackled, I stood perfectly still with my hands in plain view and asked again, “What do we do now?”

The youngest of the private sector, government sanctioned SS clones stared very intently at the readout then barked, “Have you taken any medication?”

Well, that query in and of itself answered one of my own unspoken questions. It wasn’t so much that they thought I was a terrorist. They thought I was smuggling drugs. What kind of drugs they thought I was smuggling I have no idea, but whatever it was had them awfully excited.

Still, being an honest and helpful sort I replied, “No, but I did drink a large amount of alcohol last night before going to bed.”

Instead of simply dismissing the alcohol as the cause, the kid immediately took on an attitude. He sneered at me, then adopted an unnecessary sarcastic tone as he said, “That wouldn’t cause this. We’re going to have to search you.”

My out loud voice said, “Yes sir, no problem.” However, it’s a good thing they haven’t perfected a mind reading machine because my inside voice said, “Listen up you little asshole, I’m old enough to be your father and if you take that tone with me again I’ll beat you senseless with that wand then stuff your happy ass into the X-Ray machine.”

Now, here’s the fun part. The kid didn’t seem particularly pleased that I was being cooperative. In fact, it seemed that the more cooperative I was, the more he became convinced that I was the leader of some kind of international drug cartel that was using Columbus, Ohio as a base of operations. The next thing I know I’m standing there with the “two by two, hands of blue” dude from Firefly, and he is announcing that he is going to search me. He tells me not to move then starts to explain this process, whereupon I take it upon myself to make a suggestion.

“Shouldn’t we move out of the way?” I said, interrupting him.

At this point I now have a dozen passengers stacked up behind me who have cleared security and who want to get to their gates. Unfortunately, Mister Blue Hands and I have the narrow passageway blocked. He stares at me, thinks about this for a minute, and then says, “Yeah. Maybe we should move so people can get by.”

Again, my inside voice opened it’s figurative mouth and echoing inside my skull I heard, “Well Duh… Figure that one out all by yourself there Skippy?”

The kid is standing next to the spectrometer and watching all this. It’s obvious from the look on his face that he is working up some kind of “I’m gonna get a medal” hard-on because he thinks he’s caught himself a dangerous drug smuggler.

Now that we had moved out of the way, bluehands started to tell me again how the procedure works. Before he made it halfway through the first sentence I spread my feet apart and held my arms straight out to my sides. He screwed a quizzical look onto his face and asked, “You know how this works?”

My outside voice said, “Yeah, I fly a lot so I’ve seen it done.” My inside voice screamed, “Anyone who’s ever seen an episode of a cop show on TV knows how this works you moron. Just get it over with. And, just so you know, If I have to endure this anyway, I’d much rather have the hot blonde gal over there on the other security line grabbing at my crotch instead of you.”

In retrospect I suppose knowing how a pat down works made me look guilty, especially given that the TSA kid who was daydreaming about a commendation damn near soiled his britches in excitement when I automatically “assumed the position.”

And so, I was subjected to a full pat down while the wide-eyed five-foot nothing member of the federal rent-a-cops tore my carry-on apart. I have to say, it was kind of amusing when she started looking through the viewfinder on my camera like it was an alien artifact. But, I think what tickled me most was the abject confusion she displayed upon finding the vacuum sealed retail package of pepperoni sticks I carry just in case I’m ever stuck on the tarmac for 4 hours in an airplane that can’t move. (Don’t laugh. It’s actually happened, and I hadn’t had dinner that night.)

Those really confused her. I mean flat out confused. I hate to think what would have happened if she had opened up my notebook and started reading the handwritten portions of my latest manuscript.

But, anyway, when the search was over the supervisor kid seemed a bit disappointed. It was pretty clear that he thought he’d captured a hardened criminal who was stupid enough to smuggle drugs in a carry-on bag. On top of that, when they gave me back said carry-on bag, everything had been shoved back into it in such a haphazard fashion that it ended up taking me twenty minutes to straighten it out. And, on top of that, I had to ask them to return my CPAP machine. Yeah, go figure.

But, it gets better…

The excitement now behind us, Morrison and I strolled down the concourse to our gate, checking out the restaurants along the way since it was approaching lunchtime. For the next hour, and even right on up until we boarded our flight, the blue shirted TSA kid kept popping up everywhere we turned. I’m fairly certain he was following me.

It’s too bad this didn’t happen around Thanksgiving. If it had, then I would be able to write a 17 minute long, forever enduring folk song about it, and then go hang out with Arlo Guthrie. (I wonder if he gets searched by the TSA?)

But do you want to know the real kicker? We finally boarded the airplane, this time an Airbus 320, and as soon as we were in our seats the pilot came over the loudspeaker with a familiar piece of news. It seemed the auxiliary power unit was malfunctioning, we had no air conditioning, and that instead of sending someone to Sears for a DieHard battery, he had bribed some guys in yellow vests and earmuffs to give us a jump, just as soon as they could find where they stashed the cables.

I kid you not.

Maybe I should start packing jumper cables in my carry-on. Wonder what the TSA would think about that…

More to come…

Murv