I don’t travel as much via airplane as I used to — which doesn’t say much, actually, considering that when I was with my last company I was on a flight about once every other week for about two years.
At any rate, it’s been a little while since I’ve been out to DIA, and I realize that I miss it. Traveling was something that I know — something I was good at, atually — a series of strange locations and face that I always found oddly familiar.
Things have changed since the last time I was in the air, and I have to say it’s a huge improvement over the bad old days of ‘increased airport security’. The new guys are something else entirely.
Walking through the metal detector gate, nothing whistled. The guy looked at me, looked at my belt buckle (metal, normal-sized), frowned at the lack of beeping the thing had caused, and sent me to the guy with the wand. While I was being wanded and patted down the conveyor belt tech (who had been put in direct charge of my belongings as they went under the x-ray instead of simply sending them past a series of uncaring eyes) came over with my carry on and told me that I had been selected for a secondary bag search.
You’ll note the absence of the word ‘random’. I know I did. They were picking out people based off things that looked suspicious, rather than using a game of tiddleywinks complicated divining method. Bravo.
So we went over to a table and the guy explained that I had a lot of cables in my bag. I knew this. He explained that because of all the cables it was very hard to tell what else was in my bag. I knew this too — had even reflected on it at times — there was no way anyone was really seeing anything but a cable nest in my bag when it ran through the x-ray.
So this guy proceeded to carefully, methodically, and very VERY politely remove all the cables from my bag. Please sir, no helping.
Power transformer for my laptop. Ditto for my palm keyboard. One charger cable for my call phone, a second one I didn’t know was in there, a third one that only works for Jackie’s phone (she forgot it), the charger for our digital camera, a 12” CAT 5, the USB connection for our digital camera, a cigarette lighter-to-115v converter, my Palm, and the Palm keyboard.
Yeah, I have a lot of cables.
All of them went into one container, the bag went into another, and they both went back under the x-ray. I waited, they came back, and I put everything back in the bag.
Everyone was unfailingly polite-but-firm throughout, and the whole thing took LESS time than my past trips when a woman might decide she didn’t like my shoes (prior to the bomber incident, mind you).
I was impressed and I made a point of mentioning it. The bag guy asked me what I meant, and I explained that everything was faster, more professional, and that everyone seemed as thgough they knew what they were doing and and why the hell they were doing it.
“Well… we do,” he replied, “but thank you for the comment. Have a good trip.” Good stuff.
I got to my gate two hours (!) early and checked to make sure they hadn’t moved it.
“This is eventually the gate for Omaha?”
She raised her eyebrows, looked at her screen, and shook her head in the universal ‘I’m not promising anything’ expression. “Well, we’ll keep our fingers crossed,” she replied.
At least the security guys have improved.
