Datebook: Friday, January 19th ~ 2007
The Travel Day.
There are moments in our lives that are filled with foreshadowing.
Our traveling party consisted of two moms and two skating “girls”. The moms had one large bag (with some empty room for last minute items from the daughters) and the “girls”, well, it was difficult to count—they each had two bags to be checked, several carry-on bags that had to be stuffed inside of other bags, and a proxy carry-on bag for their mom to carry on.
No problem. Until you get to the ticket window.
Ticket windows have evolved over the years so that now there are several ticket agents that stand behind the counter. In front of the counter are little machines that dispense “self-serve” boarding passes. This actually takes three times longer and an occasional glance at the ticket agent makes one think of pit bosses in Las Vegas—there is a definite look of superiority as they gaze at the masses. They have eliminated that question, “did you pack these bags yourself” which keeps you from starting off the trip with a lie, in retrospect I’m not sure if this is a comforting feeling, except perhaps the realization that the TSA has finally acknowledged that someone who might want to blow up a plane is not going to be quelled and stopped with that riveting question.
No questions about bag packing, no assistance with boarding passes and computer snafus until it is time to tag the bags. Then the strong arm of Northwest descends and pushes the button on the weight machine, and just like at home, you hold your breath while the scale of injustice decides your fate.
One overweight bag.
We’ve been here before.
“You can take some items out and repack them in another suitcase,” the deadpan ticket agent states. We turn and look at the line behind us that resembles those panned on television of American Idol try-out lines, well, maybe the line that has already been skewered by Simon Cowell.
“That’s okay,” we all say together like a well-trained quartet. The ticket agent pauses with that little sticky label in hand, like maybe she has to report this as suspicious behavior. “We don’t want to hold up the line,” we say, trying to win her over. She gives a slight shake of her head as if we are poster children for the decadence of this country. She does not understand that we could never open our bags and expose bras, bears, and tambourines to the awaiting crowd.
She accepts our money for being overweight with distain, like we just used our entire paycheck to buy lottery tickets, and we ask the skating muses to make sure the destination tags that read “GEG” somehow really means Spokane and not “Greater East Gesus”
My adult traveling companion mom warned me that she gets a trifle nervous when flying. This turned out to be as much of an understatement as saying “skating is expensive.”
I was forewarned when she grabbed my arm during boarding and asked, “What was that?”
“It’s okay, it was just the flight attendant closing an overhead compartment.”
When the pilot announced they were going to de-ice the plane I realized my seatmate could subsidize her daughter’s skating with voice-overs for horror movies. Luckily the flight attendants were not related to the counter agents and sold my friend 2 Skye vodka’s before take off and those four shots made the rest of the trip amusing and several other rows actually joined her in a sing-a-long as we soared along at 38,000 feet.
As we waited at baggage claim it was apparent that there was a pattern. The male passengers waited for luggage that eventually turned out to be small leather carriers the size of shaving kits, and the female skating crowd waited, adding to their stacks of baggage until it appeared they were all changing their zip-codes and not just visiting for the week.
Our shuttle driver told us he had been at his job for twenty years and had never had a bus that full or with as much luggage.
He wasn’t complaining of course, since the dollar per bag rule probably meant we were making his mortgage payment for the month.
Regardless, we are all here and so are the shoes.
Mombo
There are moments in our lives that are filled with foreshadowing.
Our traveling party consisted of two moms and two skating “girls”. The moms had one large bag (with some empty room for last minute items from the daughters) and the “girls”, well, it was difficult to count—they each had two bags to be checked, several carry-on bags that had to be stuffed inside of other bags, and a proxy carry-on bag for their mom to carry on.
No problem. Until you get to the ticket window.
Ticket windows have evolved over the years so that now there are several ticket agents that stand behind the counter. In front of the counter are little machines that dispense “self-serve” boarding passes. This actually takes three times longer and an occasional glance at the ticket agent makes one think of pit bosses in Las Vegas—there is a definite look of superiority as they gaze at the masses. They have eliminated that question, “did you pack these bags yourself” which keeps you from starting off the trip with a lie, in retrospect I’m not sure if this is a comforting feeling, except perhaps the realization that the TSA has finally acknowledged that someone who might want to blow up a plane is not going to be quelled and stopped with that riveting question.
No questions about bag packing, no assistance with boarding passes and computer snafus until it is time to tag the bags. Then the strong arm of Northwest descends and pushes the button on the weight machine, and just like at home, you hold your breath while the scale of injustice decides your fate.
One overweight bag.
We’ve been here before.
“You can take some items out and repack them in another suitcase,” the deadpan ticket agent states. We turn and look at the line behind us that resembles those panned on television of American Idol try-out lines, well, maybe the line that has already been skewered by Simon Cowell.
“That’s okay,” we all say together like a well-trained quartet. The ticket agent pauses with that little sticky label in hand, like maybe she has to report this as suspicious behavior. “We don’t want to hold up the line,” we say, trying to win her over. She gives a slight shake of her head as if we are poster children for the decadence of this country. She does not understand that we could never open our bags and expose bras, bears, and tambourines to the awaiting crowd.
She accepts our money for being overweight with distain, like we just used our entire paycheck to buy lottery tickets, and we ask the skating muses to make sure the destination tags that read “GEG” somehow really means Spokane and not “Greater East Gesus”
My adult traveling companion mom warned me that she gets a trifle nervous when flying. This turned out to be as much of an understatement as saying “skating is expensive.”
I was forewarned when she grabbed my arm during boarding and asked, “What was that?”
“It’s okay, it was just the flight attendant closing an overhead compartment.”
When the pilot announced they were going to de-ice the plane I realized my seatmate could subsidize her daughter’s skating with voice-overs for horror movies. Luckily the flight attendants were not related to the counter agents and sold my friend 2 Skye vodka’s before take off and those four shots made the rest of the trip amusing and several other rows actually joined her in a sing-a-long as we soared along at 38,000 feet.
As we waited at baggage claim it was apparent that there was a pattern. The male passengers waited for luggage that eventually turned out to be small leather carriers the size of shaving kits, and the female skating crowd waited, adding to their stacks of baggage until it appeared they were all changing their zip-codes and not just visiting for the week.
Our shuttle driver told us he had been at his job for twenty years and had never had a bus that full or with as much luggage.
He wasn’t complaining of course, since the dollar per bag rule probably meant we were making his mortgage payment for the month.
Regardless, we are all here and so are the shoes.
Mombo
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