Travel stories

Returning from Atlanta (Sept. 20) during which I realized I like traveling by plane – less and less. Some observations:

First – rude TSA folks – actually ONE TSA folk in Atlanta. Standing in line barefooted waiting for my shoes to come out of the x-ray thing. The line is jammed up because the guy in front of me apparently has some suspiciously-shaped thing in a bag so the radiologist was taking his/her sweet time reviewing the picture. Meanwhile people are piling up in the narrow line to wait for our shoes etc.

The TSA fellow started asking then he came close to yelling for everyone to please move down. None of us could move because the guy in front of me was waiting for his now overly radiated bag. We couldn’t go anywhere and if there is one thing I know about airports and security these days – don’t go anywhere you aren’t supposed to. The TSA is like the IRS – shoot first and ask questions later. Except I didn’t see any guns. Tasers maybe?

But the guy wouldn’t move and the TSA guy would never simply address him directly but rather voiced his command louder and louder over the entire helpless group.

Ob. #2 – ubiquitous texting. Once on the plane I sat next to a young woman who spent most of her time rapidly moving her fingers over a miniscule keypad of her blackberry-like device. Obviously texting someone. The odd thing is she would text – seconds later would come the reply, she’d stand up (no easy task with the baggage area overhead), turn around and holler something to her text-mate in the rear of the plane. This went on until the flight attendant told everyone to please turn off all electronic devices.

Ob. #3 – once we landed in Springfield we had to wait for a few minutes before we could de-plane. Two guys in front of me both had i-Phones. Each one of them was checking local weather. Here’s the odd thing – one i-Phone said it was 63 degrees and the other said 67. We talk about how quickly the weather can change in Missouri but I didn’t think it would be that different, that fast!