The long road to Texas, Vol. 2: Ditching Kennedy to hang out online

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Relive the wonder of Vol. 1.
She was one of those gals who walk around dressed up like it’s the 1950’s all over again. Well, sorta. They’re not fully committed to the bit, which annoys me.

They do the dramatic eyebrows, bright-red lipstick, jet black hair tied up with a bandana in case some housework should come up.

It’s a nice look, but I wish they’d go whole hog with it. These girls tend to mix the old school vibe with some of today’s sluttier fashions (tight this, low-cut that) and then they cap it all off with lots of aggressive tattoos and piercings.

It’d be like seeing a full-on Amish guy walking around with Google Glass on. Something just doesn’t add up.

Even though she seemed nice enough, I got the distinct impressive that her haphazard fashion sense might actually be a symptom of a bit of a flakiness going on inside her noggin.

When the overhead bin above us filled up, she tried to cram an entire suitcase under the seat in front of her. Needless to say, that didn’t work. Then she decided she was just going to sit it in front of her and wrap her legs around it. Surprisingly, that also didn’t work.

Eventually, the flight attendant was once again called into service and he helped her find a reasonable home for the suitcase.

Once the plane was actually in the air, you know the part that should be the most complicated and risky, everything was completely fine. Putting several hundred thousand pounds of plane, people and personal belongings in the air is apparently much less difficult than asking a few dozen people to take their seats in an orderly fashion.

I landed in Texas, hopped in a cab and made my way to my hotel, which is lovely yet frustratingly secluded.

I planned to take a trip into Dallas today and visit were Kennedy was shot, like every good, card-carrying American and Russian should do when in Texas. Same trip, different emotions depending on the perspective.

In order to do that, I would have needed to find a way back to the airport ($25 cab ride or $13 dollar shuttle), somehow get on the right bus to downtown Dallas, make the hour+ trip (complete with two transfers), and then do the whole thing in reverse later.

The long road to Texas, Vol. 1: Manbabies in flight

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My Texas odyssey began yesterday at around 5 pm (Eastern standard time, the correct time) in the great state of Pennsylvania. That’s about the time I cleared security at the Philadelphia International Airport, way ahead of my 6:45 departure time.

                So just like the one taken by the legendary Greek wanderer Odyssey, my own voyage also kicked off with about two hours of loafing around an airport listening to podcasts on horror movies. Trust me, that’s how that book started. I should know since I took a Greek Lit seminar in college. Seminar. They don’t just let anybody take one of those.

                Now, the TSA agents at the Philadelphia airport tend to take a lot of flak for being woefully incompetent and needlessly surly and some of that flak – OK all of it – has been totally deserved. Until yesterday.

                It seems that Philly International has adopted a new approach to airport security.

                Apparently the days of emptying out your laptop and toiletries bags, taking off your shoes and belts for some reason and then putting all of those items into half a dozen giant gray bins to be scanned individually are gone.  

                All I had to do yesterday was empty my pockets into my laptop bag and then they just scanned that and my suitcase. With everything still in them. And then they walked me through a metal detector, belted and shoed.  

That’s it. No bins. Simple, speedy … efficient? It was almost as if they had some sort of machine that could let them see inside of your bags without you having to open them first. And maybe even a second machine that was powerful enough to see through belts AND shoes.

Are we any less safe now that people are allowed to walk through security without performing the least appealing strip tease ever? No, of course we’re not less safe and this just makes me all the more angry at TSA for wasting all of that time since 9-11 making people take their belts off.

But don’t worry. Philly’s TSA hasn’t exactly become a well-oiled defender of common-sense. On my way into the building, a lady stopped me and asked me to zipper something on my suitcase, which when left unzippered, made the bag look too puffy. Still fighting the good fight against puffiness at least.

Once I boarded the plane – a very reasonable by Philly standards 30 minutes after my ticket said I would – I made the mistake of putting my laptop under my seat and not the one in front of me. This led to an issue.