BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

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

Those of you who follow me on Twitter, etc, know that I went to Ohio recently. I had a book signing and presented workshops at a great store called Violet Flame Gifts. VFG is absolutely wonderful. Heather, the owner, and her entire family always treat me like royalty, they feed me until I am about to burst, and they are just plain fun to be around, as are the folks who come to the store for the seminars and such. I am always glad to return to VFG or the VFG sponsored event, Earth Warriors Festival, because I know I will have a great time while I am there.

However… (aww c’mon, you knew it was coming)… In the 5 years I have been visiting the Newark, Ohio store, either my trip to or from has been fraught with some kind of issue, such as delays. I don’t blame Heather or VFG for this, so please don’t get that idea. These are things completely out of her control. I’m just starting to believe there is an anti-Murv vortex hanging over the Ohio valley, but only insofar as travel – specifically flying.

Now, at the risk of waxing nostalgic, something I do all the time as you all well know, I’m old enough that I can clearly recall when air travel was nothing short of glamorous. It was the purview of those with money, and those who could afford to travel in the lap of luxury.

Back then, flight attendants were called Stewardesses, and they were the bomb. Not only were they pretty and wore great uniforms, they smiled and made you feel welcome, important, and appreciated.

Hell, in 1975 one of them donned a headset, climbed behind the controls, and flew a crippled 747 through the mountains of Colorado after a light aircraft ripped a hole in the side of the Jumbo Jet and killed off the flight crew… Okay, okay, so Airport ’75 was just a movie. It didn’t actually happen. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that back in the day, “Stewardesses” were the “bomb” – little girls wanted to grow up to be them, and little boys wanted to grow up to date them. And who could blame them? These were the elite hostesses of the air. The cream of the crop.

These days, that just isn’t how it is. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some stellar flight attendants out there, and I’ve even met a few – both female and male – but they seem to be few and far between… on my flights, at least. Usually I end up faced with an angry airborne waitress or waiter with a sour disposition and a superiority complex. I suppose it could be the uniform and the wings that make them feel so powerful. If that’s the case, and the outfit carries with it that kind of influence, perhaps I should start wearing a blazer with elbow patches and chewing on a fancy meerschaum pipe. Then maybe I’d feel more like an author instead of just some guy who accidentally sticks words to paper sometimes.

But, as usual, I digress…

To be honest, the flight attendants are only one symptom in a vast array of ailments where air travel is concerned, and thus far they’ve never been my problem on these Ohio odysseys. Well… Except for the guy we’ll call Mr. Chronic Halitosis. He was working coach on the first leg of my trip to Ohio, and I’m not sure what crawled into his mouth and died, but he really needed to pry it out of there and use some strong mouthwash. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the 2 dollar cologne he had bathed in that day really didn’t help either. It just made you gasp, which in turn allowed you to get the full effect of the halitosis. Hmm… Maybe that was his plan all along. Lucky for me it was a short flight.

But, getting back to the other issues… Truth is, the major pain that has been affecting me quite a bit over the last couple of years is the fact that you can no longer “get there from here.” By that I mean you are pretty much unable to board an airplane in Saint Louis and disembark at your destination without first visiting 1 or more additional cities along the way. This holds true for almost any destination with only a few minor exceptions, but especially for Ohio.

And furthermore, it’s not like they pull in, fill up the tank while you make a pit stop, then get back on the way. No, absolutely not. They take you to a city where you don’t want to go in the first place, then kick you out of the plane and send you to find another airplane on which to catch a ride. And apparently, when I wasn’t paying attention, a law was passed which states that your connecting flight shall be leaving from a gate that is to be “no less than 1 mile from your arrival gate, and if the airport is made up of multiple terminals, the departure gate must then be located in the terminal farthest from the arrival gate. Furthermore, all passengers should be subjected to a minimum of 1 delay or 2 gate changes per trip.“

It’s a good thing I like walking and don’t mind the exercise. The hurry up and wait thing, however, I could certainly do without.

So, by now I am sure you have guessed that this is pretty much what happened with my most recent trip to Ohio. And, if you guessed that, give yourself a cigar. If you didn’t, scroll back up and look at the flight plan graphic. Notice how the arrows are aligned to make an infinity symbol? Well, that’s not just a coincidence, because I was the guest of the airline for something on the order of forever.

And, it all began like this…

I started out my day like any other Friday. Up at 5:30 AM, taking out the trash, cleaning the litter boxes, grabbing a shower, packing lunch for E K, getting her majesty and the O-spring out to work and school respectively, etc… After all of that, courtesy of a ride provided by my publicist, by 11:55 AM I was finally sitting at my gate at Lambert Saint Louis International Airport. Now, I would like to say that Lambert has become more efficient, but that simply isn’t the case. What has happened is that so many airlines have moved their hubs away from Saint Louis that we no longer have anywhere near the volume we once had. Therefore, even though I pared down the “arrive 2 hours ahead of your flight time” to 1 1/2 hours, I still had better than an hour before my flight because checking in and getting through security was a breeze. Since I had this wait, and was scheduled for only a short layover at my connection, I decided I had better eat something now while I had a chance.

This seemed like a good idea at the time, however the concourse where my gate happened to be had been undergoing renovations. Now, this will likely be a good thing once finished, but at that particular point in time it meant my choices were limited. I could pick between booze, Star-Make-A-Bucks, some pizza outfit that had a 100 yard long line of people in front of it, or the pre-made sandwich cooler nearby.

Not wanting booze, a danish, or to stand in line, I was pretty much hamstrung. I stood in front of the open faced refrigerator and perused my options. Ham and cheese on whole wheat, or chicken on ciabatta. Ham, chicken… Whole wheat, ciabatta… The debate inside my head raged on for several minutes. Finally I flipped a mental coin and reached for a sandwich. In the end I had the rubber chicken on sawdust bread with wilted lettuce, and an orange juice. If I could believe the label on my sandwich it had been made fresh that day – somewhere in the state of Maryland. Made fresh or not, it didn’t take long for me to conclude that the trip from Maryland to Missouri didn’t exactly agree with it. But, I choked it down anyway, and then cried just a little. I mean, after all, I had just consumed a really horrid $1.25 chicken sandwich. Personally, I really didn’t feel like it was truly worth $1.25, and that just made it all the more sad since I had paid $7.49 for the privilege of gnawing on it. Don’t even get me started on the OJ. I suppose it might have actually been worth the $4.49 for the 12-ounce bottle, given that it had fermented a bit and now contained alcohol. However, I tend to take my screwdrivers a bit less “ripe” if you know what I mean…

Looking back, this was one of the better parts of my travel experience that day, because you see, the minute we boarded the airplane this leg of my trip inevitably fell into the bend over and grab your ankles vortex…

More to come…

Murv

Next Installment: I Thought 7:11 Was A Convenience Store…