Fast forward to now…sitting in the Charlotte Douglas airport. Bloody airport so crowded I am sitting in an abandoned gate area. People everywhere. I had to all but disrobe to go through security. Okay, take shoes off, remover baggy of liquids/gels, take laptop out of case. Put everything in trays and on belt. Wait, hoping they don’t ask me to take off my suit jacket. Then pass under the arch, then picking up my laptop, baggy, shoes, wallet, purse, messenger bag, run to an empty bench. Begin to put things away, shoes on to realize left roller bag on belt. Run back, get roller bag, luckily no-one steals my stuff whilst back is turned. Go back to stuff, continue putting things back in pockets, etc and put shoes on. Then find closest ladies restroom, and change from suit into comfy pants and flats. Keep fancy shirt on because it is pretty and I like it. This is all done whilst balancing on one foot as to not actually contact restroom floor with bare skin of feet. Then leave stall and realize scalp is killing me from the fancy up-do, so remove all one hundred bobby pins and put pigtail in. Then find this seat after cruising through a bookstore carrying nothing that interested me or I had not already read.

Phew.

Can you imagine one of those hatted and gloved women from the 50s/60s going to the airport today? The removing of gloves and shoes. Then metal detector would go crazy from the garters/undergarments. They would be subject to all horrors of searching. Air travel is simply awful these days. I cannot stand it. The stupid lines. The ridiculous baggies. Why do I have to take my shoes off and laptop out? Why? Then it occurs to me I never had to dump my water out, as the x-ray cannot see through my stainless steel bottle, can it? I don’t think so. The only good thing about flying is that I will get home sooner than I could drive. Charlotte is about a 7-8 hour drive from my house, and I wouldn’t have left until 4pm, I’d say so I would be getting home at midnight. This way I get to suffer the indignities of flying, but I’ll be home no later than 8pm. I guess that I worth the four hours.

Post from: Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

Air travel is for the birds