Homeward Blog

Anaheim pulled it out last night so the series is now Anaheim 3, Detroit 2. The series goes back out to Anaheim for the next game.

I, however, am going home. At least for a day or three.

Fortuitous, since I promised the perfect child that I would take her and her minions to the midnight showing of Pirates of the Caribbean – At Worlds End on Thursday night.

So… Polly was heading back to Jax, and Steve was heading out to Anaheim for game support, and I gave them a ride to the airport. At 4:45 in the morning. Heh.

Steve’s flight was at 7:00 and Polly’s was at 8 something… Mine was at 11, and I'm loaded with equipment from the TVI Test. I dropped them at the curbside check-in at about 5:20.

I was there a bit early… Like 5 hours, after I did all my travel chores… gassing the car, dropping it off at the rental drop, and taking the shuttle back to the terminal. Southwest won’t let you check in more than 4 hours before your flight, so I got to sit and kill some time near the security line…

It was kind of a “A Day at Disneyworld” kind of thing… the line went through a series of s-shaped crowd management turns, and then due to the early flights, the line snaked back down a blind hallway that you couldn’t see from the entrance…

As people would walk up, the ubiquitous Crowd Control “let me see your ticket” TSA guy was herding people back down the hallway as they tried to find a way past the bulk of the line.

“Sir, follow the line.”

“Mam, the line is there.”

“Please, back of the line, sir.”

The fun part was the reaction as people turned the corner and saw how far the line extended.

“Oh Man….I don’t believe…”

“Damn.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Geez!”

“Oh no…”

“What the hell…?”

Or some variation on the above themes.

The there are the people who were late for their flights and tried to go through the “Crew Only” lane…. Not pretty.

“Please sir, we go by the line, not your flight times…”

Two girls turned on the waterworks trying to avoid the 30 minute wait.
Very entertaining, to say the least. Mr. No Tolerance didn’t budge.

Oh well.

I’m on Fistfight Airlines… I mean Southwest Airlines. Time to go stake out my position in line.

TBG out-