California
“… I believe the Mamas & the Papas wrote a song about this place.”
So we’ve just returned from our AMAZING trip to California and I’m ready to break it all down for you here in a blog.
We left Atlanta early last Tuesday morning for Los Angeles and all was well with the world… We made the MARTA train in plenty of time, whizzed through our Air-Tran check in and off through the security line we went… Now the story begins.
So after removing my watch and flip-flops and removing my ipad/ipod/iphone from their respective cases; placing them neatly and orderly in their own individual bins (per the request of the TSA officer in front of me, more on them later…), i went to walk through the normal “metal detector”. I was sent back through the metal detector, as I’d apparently gone while the machine was resetting itself, so instead now I was “asked” to “volunteer for” a full body scan through the new machines that caused the uproar earlier this year. I didn’t really much care seeing as how I was wearing only a T-shirt & some Jordan brand basketball shorts, so I went through the scanner.
Upon exiting the machine i had two rather large TSA agents stand in front of me with their arms crossed saying i had to “wait for a supervisors’ inspection”; 15 minutes later said “supervisor”; which must be a code word for 6’7”- Arnold Schwarzenegger from Conan - type of guy, arrives and instructs me to “proceed with him” to an enclosed room for “privacy”… Apparently my full body scan came through “incomplete” and showed a “bulge in the lower waist region that arose suspicions” (those were his words EXACTLY…), and that’s when i heard the door close and the plastic doctors gloves snap into place.
I’ll spare you the details, let’s just say that I wasn’t exactly sure what they were looking for but they did everything in their power to find said “it”… Post-groping or “non-invasive pat-down” as the TSA calls it, I was allowed to proceed onward to the plane, albeit feeling strangely violated, it certainly didn’t help that Joe was laughing hysterically and proceeded to remind me of the experience every chance he got over the next 5 days.
The flight was full, but went by pretty quickly. Upon arrival at LAX I could see that the guy in the seat in front of me was one of those “Jump up the minute the plane stops at the gate even though there’s nowhere to go” type of people; a little back story, the woman in other seat in front of me had just undergone a procedure on her hip and was using a 4-prong walking cane for stability; it had been stowed in the overhead compartment above me with said “Jumpy Guy’s” luggage. So the plane stops at the gate, “Jumpy Guy” leaps out of his seat, flings open the overhead compartment, and said cane begins to fall. The cane somehow catches on a luggage handle, changing it’s trajectory from straight down to swinging pendulum club of doom, and it then swings full force and hits me square in the face… I’m knocked silly; that point where your eyes water and you see silver specks floating in front of your face, yeah that was me. Once again, all I heard was Joe’s hysterical laughter at my plight; glad I could entertain you today Mr. Kang.
I’ll type up more on the trip in my next post, but wanted my airplane experience to stand alone…
cheers,
PDL
