Flying to Chicago

[azurelunatic]

I begged a ride to BART from my aunt. The last-minute nature of things left me sort of flailing, and while I should have done that part the night before, and also, oh, SLEPT, well, this is me we're talking about. But that got done and sorted.

Monday night, norabombay called me to inform me that it was on, and did I still possibly want to come hang out with her in chilly Chicago for just under a week? Not having anything that strictly required me to be in SF that week, I agreed, and commenced throwing things in suitcases.

So there I was on BART wrangling my suitcases on Tuesday morning just before lunchtime. (On the grounds that coming back sometimes requires more in the way of baggage than going, I checked a bag although I probably could have squished everything into a carry-on and a "personal item".) That was pretty much the opposite of fun, especially on account of navigating new parts of the BART system with no hand free to actually use my cane, and then getting my cane tangled in my bags while the driver of the BART-to-OAK shuttle tried to get my big suitcase freed from the "personal item" (I'd carefully strapped them together) so he could chuck it in the luggage rack. That was not in any way fun, and my voice was in the octave that signifies an oncoming panic attack.

Eventually I did get untangled, and then we arrived at the Oakland airport. Between vague signage and total unfamiliarity, I wound up walking in the wrong direction, which meant that I did about three or four times more walking than I should have to get where I was going. Without, of course, use of my cane. So I was in that excellent state of mind where you've had less than four hours of sleep, you're in massive pain, your thigh muscles are informing you that you've been burning your "burst" speed so if there's a fucking cheetah you're even more screwed than usual (it's unpleasantly like being very drunk), you know that your carefully-groomed appearance has developed a halo of flyaway hairs and you're starting to ooze sweat now that you're out of the cool morning breeze ... and it's time to talk to the airline fellow about how you're flying standby to Chicago, on the US's very own version of the cheapest airline in town.

Fortunately my default for such situations is hopeful cheer. I was the only person I could see checking in, and I was early. Hooray! And the helpful guy behind the counter took a look at things and presented me with two boarding passes, two realio trulio boarding passes, one for this flight, and one for the flight out of Vegas. (Apparently the not-so-realio trulio standby passes are on flimsy paper rather than the cardstock.) I'd have to check with the desk person in Vegas, but he'd done what he could to make my flight through as excellent as possible.

I realized that I was coming up on the security gate, and performed what is probably going to turn into a sport if this nonsense about liquids is allowed to continue: the pre-security waterbottle chug. I'd calculated reasonably, and 12oz of water really isn't all that much if you've been moving around a lot.

This was my first encounter with security where they had the pornoscanners, and there were prominently-posted signs about anyone being able to elect for alternative screening. One of the guys asked me if the lanyard I was wearing meant that I was an airport employee -- nope, that's where I keep my driver's license and debit card when I'm going to have to retrieve them quickly. I then told him politely and firmly that I would like alternative screening, please.

Happily, there was no nonsense about asking if I could walk without my cane (as poor katieastrophe had at SFO); without being asked, someone produced a wooden cane and handed it to me before directing me through the magnetometers. Since there were so few people about, they were able to do the pat-down right there and then. The TSA officer doing it was polite, professional, and told me what she was going to do before doing it, and adjusted her procedure to account for my cane and all the other practical factors. I was pleased with the encounter.

I gathered myself back together, found a bathroom and a water fountain, and settled in near the gate. Airports have started to wise up and have started to install charging stations, benches with outlets to plug stuff in. Good times. I found myself a seat near one of those, found that my trusty iPod Shuffle Fruitz was not in fact charged, and started reading: Maureen Johnson's Devilish; it is very clear that Catholic school was a thing for her. :D

Seat 1F turned out to be right up front at the window, and by right up front I mean this was the nice big front seats that are two per row, not three. Glee! I settled in, glad for the seatroom and footroom, but slightly woeful about the lack of a good place to shove my waterbottle. I had no seatmate, and neither did the person on the other side of the aisle. There was a cute little kid and his dad. The kid had use of an iPad for the flight. I tweeted about that a bit. I did give in to my temptation to throw a paper airplane, but it curved and landed in the aisle.

I finished Devilish. I even slept a bit. I think.

I had a lovely chat with the flight attendant in the front of the cabin. She and her husband would like to go on an Alaska cruise some day.

I landed in Las Vegas. The place is beautiful from the air. I love looking at sand. The lights are glorious too. I stomped all around looking for a bathroom, and then I went back for my gate. I was somewhat rested but still all ow all over.

Fortunately for my budget, I had packed myself a pair of sandwiches, and ate the second one here. Other people were complaining about $10 Whoppers. Wow. Eeep.

When an airline person showed up, I showed my boarding pass and made sure that all was well (which it was). I found a nice seat, although the waiting area was full (for what turned out to be the flight departing before mine). Two guys were talking; they were stranded at the airport. Woe! One of them was complaining of headache and just wanted some Tylenol.

Now, I am a prepared Lunatic, and one of the things I do tend to do is bring emergency supplies with me. I fished around in my first aid kit and came up with the required packet, which I passed to the guy. I also wound up sharing some of my snacks, and someone else produced granola bars for him, as he was out of cash and hungry. (His buddy rolled his eyes at him and pointed out that he could have spotted him some cash, as *he* wasn't broke yet; ah, guys.) Their tale of woe involved showing up at the airport late on account of a very late cab and bad traffic. Alas! They were headed to Canada, and hadn't made it on a standby flight yet.

My flight turned out to be pretty full, with only two seats (1C and 1D) empty. (I was 1F again, thanks to the very very *very* nice guy at OAK.) I chatted with 1A and the leader of the flight attendants. He seemed slightly punchy, and was trolling back and forth with the flight attendant at the back of the cabin. He joked with one of the passengers that there was a $10 fee to throw away trash in their bin; the passenger was Deeply Unamused. I was reminded of one LJ April Fool's Day joke that had not gone well: I can't remember which specific one it was, but it was too close to actual practice and user fears to really be funny to the average user.

My phone was near to out of juice when I put it away. When I retrieved it after we landed, it was in fact entirely out. I had to plug it in to the battery pack so I could text Nora that I'd arrived, and by the time it had deigned to start up, she'd already left and I was in the baggage claim.

She picked me up promptly, and showed me some of the lights and sights on our way back to her place, including a detour for a hot dog place that had two giant hot dogs (one in a leopard-print banana hammock) with SCARY GLOWING EYES on the roof. Awesome.

There was general orientation (this is the light switch, this is the 17-year-old dachshund, this is the wifi and password) and hilarity, and then sleep.

After she came back from work, we did dinner, and then city lights, some groceries, vids-and-drinks. There was Tech Woe. We explored some of the leftover vodka options available, which was hilarious, the cherry fish one especially.

Having stayed up well past when I should have been in bed, I will now head there. When we wake up, we shall be tourists!

Must ping domtheknight and nudaydreamer back re: tapas. Wheeeeee!

Comments

[belmikey]

At the risk of sounding like I'm defending what were some truly execrable abuses, a lot of the much-ballyhooed issues with the TSA in implementing this year's security theatre came down to issues of training and foresight, I suspect. Example: in the case of your friend who had her cane taken from her at SFO and not given any alternatives. The agents are all trained to deprive passengers of anything that might ping the sensor (and in the case of a cane, there are several other paranoid reasons why it might make sense to at least swap it). Someone simply hadn't thought ahead, provided wooden canes, and trained the agents to offer it. Since then, someone seen the light and it got fixed, and hence, you came through with a better experience.

Obviously, there's still a lot of ick in the system. There are still agents who trip on the power, who perform more intrusive screenings than strictly necessary, that think frisking kids is a great idea, and so on. No amount of training in the world is going to fix that. The only way to fix that would be a policy that tossed demonstrable abusers out of their jobs on their asses and slapped a large red warning label on their foreheads.

[azurelunatic]

Making sure that someone does not have anything metal on them that will trip the sensor is common sense. When katieastrophe told them that she could not walk through unassisted, they then offered her a literal hand through: they wanted her to walk up and then take an agent's gloved hands to support her through. She then asked if the gloves were latex, as she is allergic. They did not know. She asked if they could please find out. They refused to do so, and a hullabaloo ensued in which they treated her poorly. I think the agents involved deserved, at the minimum, a briefing from someone very un-amused.

Canes have got to be all kinds of fun from a security perspective. Leaving aside the astonishing number of things that could be concealed inside one (Koudelka's cane springs to mind), a long stick in the hands of someone with training and mayhem on their mind is not something to take lightly.

[belmikey]

Well, heck, even without training, as potential weapons go, a stick is a pretty easy one to inflict some pain with, at least.

I actually am reasonably sure the gloves they use are not latex, for exactly the reason you cite -- completely aside from passengers with allergies, the latex sensitivity is common enough that the agents would require non-latex at least as an option. OSHA and all that. However, it was unreasonable for the agents not to be willing to make the effort to find out, and particularly sad given that it sounds like they were actually trying to be helpful right up until that point. They turned what could have been a public relations win into a total fail.

[synecdochic]

I would actually argue that the worst of the TSA fuckery has more to do with the systemic attitude of the organization from the top down, not just individual bad training. A single airport having issues = bad training. Every single airport in the US having issues = an authoritarian system that discourages independent thought and problem-solving, does not allow for individual discretion and humanity, views its mandate as a form of punishing people, treats everyone it comes into contact with as a criminal, and values obedience over intelligence.

Some of that is inherent in the TSA mandate. Most of it is due to bad management, unclear mandate, the human tendency to run with any small amount of authority until it's a huge amount of assumed authority, an internal culture framing everyone but them as the enemy and them as the noble valiant defenders of freedom, and an organizational culture that rewards bad behavior rather than disciplining it. Power-tripping agents are able to be power-tripping agents because the system was designed to back them up and reinforce their power-tripping ways the whole way.

The TSA is optimized for desensitizing agents to the humanity of passengers, and that is never a good thing.

[azurelunatic]

We were also leaving through different airports. She went out through SFO; I went out through OAK.

[belmikey]

And I just remembered something interesting. I don't know about OAK, but SFO doesn't HAVE TSA personnel. Security at SFO is handled by a California state agency, I believe. It's subtle--they wear the same snazzy royal blue--but the badges say CAS.