Air Travel

There is something insane about air travel in the US.  Let’s begin with the entire process of just getting on the plane.  That alone makes you cringe.

Our airline security system is with out a doubt, of course that is in my opinion, the worst.  OK, maybe somewhere in Africa it is not as bad.  No where else in the world makes you take off your shoes.  The process is long, the people are nasty and do they ever really find anything except shampoo that is more than 4 ounces?  Emily went through Kennedy with a huge pair of scissors in her bag ( school project )  and nobody caught it until, of course, we were on the first plane traveling inside Australia.  Flying back to the US topped the cake.  We arrived in LA, had to go through customs, recheck our bags, go to another terminal and then go through security again.  It was not smooth sailing. Stress central. Our technology is antiquated.  You know when you spend more money on installing a heating system in your home but in the long run you save money?  But then in the long run, you save money.  That reminds me of the security system in our country.  If somebody added up the cost of the people who have power to make your life miserable and sort of enjoy their new found power, we’d find out that if we spent the money on some awesome technology, we would be more efficient and wouldn’t have to hire all those miserable people.  Alas. 

OK, but this tops the cake.  This afternoon, I realized that due to a variety of basketball games put in the schedule we would have to make some changes to some plane travel on MLK and President’s Day weekend.  At 2 in the afternoon, changing MLK weekend would cost me $100 a person, changing President’s Day weekend was going to cost me $$375 per person.  I decided to confer with the group and call back after dinner.  I did call back.  Ended up that changing MLK was now going to be $276 per person and changing President’s Day Weekend would only be $176 per person.  Explain that?  In a course of 5 hours, everything changed.  Got me. 

The game of plane travel is like craps.  I’d honestly like to get on the plane and when everyone has sits down make every single person on the plane stand up and tell what they paid for their seat.  It would be a great sitcom and certainly interesting.

Comments (Archived):

  1. Brouhaha

    GG, you used the expression “tops the cake” twice in this post. Where does that expression come from? I’ve heard this “takes the cake” but never that something “tops the cake.” Can’t even find it online. P.S. Stop trying to deal directly with the airlines… 🙂 Let The Roaming Gnome take care of you!