25 February 2011

Broken Oaths

No, not politicians.
Me. I swore I wouldn't fly again until our government's agents quit irradiating or fondling our genitalia before boarding the big "bus with wings". And I actually did pretty good... it's been almost a year since I've been packed into an aluminum pipe with 200 or so of my "new best friends".

But I have a kid living 2100 miles away. When we begin to get that "I need to see him in person" feeling, the only reasonable way to cover that distance is to be jammed into a small seat and fed peanuts and diet soda for about 5 hours.
So we broke down and did it yesterday. I'll have to say the whole process surprised me. Honestly, I couldn't see any difference from the procedure we experienced a year ago.

We flew Southwest Airlines. I've said it before and I'll continue saying it:
Other airlines should take cues from Southwest. I don't know how much input the individual airlines have in their security check areas, but at our terminal the difference between Southwest and the others is dramatic. We got our boarding passes, checked our bag, and made it through security and to our gate in less than 30 minutes. No muss, no fuss, no hassle. I was actually a little ashamed at the stance I had taken about the TSA...
The agents were mostly wearing smiles and doing their jobs with a positive demeanor.
Kudos to them.

We flew three hours, ingested the aforementioned peanuts, "Plane Crackers", and diet sodas, landed in Denver for an hour to change planes, then a repeat of peanuts/crackers/diet soda. In another two hours and change we were looking at a bronze statue of John Wayne in Orange County, CA.

It's cloudy and uncomfortably chilly here.
There are too damned many people here.
Gasoline is 3.599 per gallon here.
But getting here was not nearly the chore I expected it to be...
Just wanted you to know.

6 comments:

Cissy Apple said...

Yay! Glad to hear you made it! Enjoy your visit.

The Old Man said...

It's all those things AND Big Bubba, bro. Enjoy it while it lasts....

Old NFO said...

Glad to hear it... MY experiences have not been nearly as positive. enjoy the time with family!

Brig said...

Did you bring this chilly weather to Cali? We're freezing in the Northern (best) part of the state.
I like flying Southwest, they are good.
Safe journey.

Rita said...

All I can tell you is that Bob told me when he flew down to Florida in January, he liked getting checked out by security so much, he went through three times.

But then again, he's a bit of a perv.

Bloviating Zeppelin said...

I'm lucky. Southwest is predominantly in Fornicalia. Whenever I've flown recently (last occasion in 2006, 18 times) it's been on Southwest. They somehow make the tough things easier.

BZ