There Is No "Why"

I went up to Maine for the Fourth of July to do some whitewater rafting with some friends. I'd never done it before, but it was great fun. We spent most of the morning drifting down the Penobscot River, basking in the sun, and taking in spectacular views of Mt. Katahdin and the general beauty that is the Maine wilderness. It was a welcome change from the constant grind of Washington DC.

Whereas the morning was a calm float down the stream, the afternoon was quite a bit more intense. We hit 11 sets of rapids, with a few category fives thrown in. Apparently, this is the most violent grade - a category six is said to be "unraftable".

According to the guide, each set of rapids had an imposing, testosterony name like "Bonecrusher" and "Executioner". Needless to say, it was a hell of an introduction to the sport. Who would have thought that going over a waterfall in an inflatable raft could be so much fun?

Luckily the constant splashing made it impossible to tell who had pissed their pants.

After a great weekend, we headed back to the city this morning from Manchester NH. It was a redeye flight leaving at 6:45 AM, so we weren't exactly on top of things, and my wife wound up forgetting to take my Leatherman out of her bag. It set off the alarm when we went through security, and since it was 6:25 we were quickly told that our only option was to leave the Leatherman if we had any hope of catching our flight.

It may sound strange, but I have a bit of an attachment to my Leatherman. First of all, the thing has been around the world with me, and it's helped me out innumerable times. I spent a night in a seedy Cairo hotel with the knife blade jammed into the wall above my head in case any ambitious Egyptians got it in their heads to fuck with me. Thank God I've never had to use it in that capacity though - I can barely fillet a fish without getting queasy.

Secondly, the particular model of Leatherman (the Leatherman Flair) is no longer manufactured. It's the only high quality Multitool out there with a full length blade AND a corkscrew, both of which are absolutely essential tools as far as I'm concerned. It also has a butter spreader and a cocktail fork, but I'm not so much of a pansy that I consider those to be indispensible.

Luckily, the guy in front of us heard this whole scene with the security guard go down. His wife had just dropped him off and was standing on the opposite side of the security barrier, and he said if I ran and caught her she'd be happy to mail it back to me. I sprinted away, found her, and gave her my info, showering her with gratitude the entire time.

However, since I'd crossed the ever-important security barrier, I now had to pass through the whole process once again. By this time it was about 6:35 and our flight was due to take off in 10 minutes. What else could I do but patiently wait in line all over again?

When 6:40 rolled around, they called my wife and I over the airport intercom and told us to get our asses to the gate or else the flight would be leaving without us. By this time, Fiona was absolutely flipping out (she doesn't like to miss planes, I guess) and I had to beg the people in front of me to let me through.

I made it through the metal detector with no beeps, and my wife and I sprinted for Gate 15. We got there just as they were about to close the doors. I couldn't believe we'd made it.

How naive of me to think it would be so easy.

As I handed the Southwest guy my boarding pass, I heard Fiona call out from behind me: "J, you don't have the backpack? Where the hell is the backpack??"

In the midst of the Leatherman confusion, either she or I must have put down our carryon pack - the one with $1,000 worth of camera equipment in it - for a fraction of a second. I can only assume that at the moment it hit the floor, the crack security team at Manchester Airport snatched it up and immediately sent it downstairs to the bomb-sniffing room.

Seeing as I was willing to miss a flight for a $65 Leatherman, it was instantly obvious to me what was going to happen when the Southwest guy said "You guys need to make a decision - I've got to close these doors right now."

I was not getting on that plane without my camera.

So, without even a kiss goodbye, Fiona had to jump onto the plane and head home without me. I watched her plane taxi away from the gate and headed off to locate my bomb/camera bag.

After being bounced around from person to person for 20 minutes, I was told that my backpack was most likely in the "Communications Center". Eventually a skycap instructed me to "go down that hallway all the way to the end, take a left, take your second right and then go in the last door on the right."

As I walked deeper and deeper into the bowels of Manchester Airport, I wondered how far I'd be able to get without having somebody stop me and ask why there was somebody in pink flip-flops and a skull and crossbones T-shirt wandering around a supposedly restricted area. I started walking by people wearing air traffic control headphones and carrying those weird light up cones they use to direct planes. Nobody questioned me once.

Eventually, I found the door marked "Comm Center" and walked right in through the unlocked door. At this point, I found myself confronted with a wall of video monitors displaying what must have been every inch of terminal space. I was literally in the heart of the airport, and I had walked in without answering a single question or showing so much as a Blockbuster card.

Luckily, they had my bag, and I made it onto the next flight, where my wonderful wife was waiting for me at the gate with an iced coffee. I've done a fair amount of travelling, so I don't get bent out of shape by delayed flights or other minor inconveniences, but as I'm sure you can imagine I did get to thinking about the current state of Homeland Security.

It seems to me that our Homeland is just as secure as it ever was. The reason I was able to walk through the inner sanctum of the airport is pretty simple - I'm not going to blow anything up, and everybody knows it. Should I have been stopped by somebody? Probably, but it's really not that big a deal.

I know it might seem like an oxymoron, but it actually made me feel safer that I could walk around without having an M-16 thrust in my face by some jumpy National Guardsman. For the first time in a long while, I felt like I was walking around in the America that I remember. The whole experience, from the wonderful couple with the Leatherman right through to the Comm Center Adventure made me feel like this era of constant unrelenting tension could be coming to an end.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Happy Fourth of July, everybody.

Posted by SmooveJ Zao on July 6, 2004 at 07:01 PM in Little Stories | Permalink