Insanity springs (rolls) eternal

Okay, seriously. What the hell is wrong with people?

Call me old fashioned. When I was a kid, there was such a thing as discipline, or, as I liked to say, the ever-present threat of a severe smackdown from my parents should I cause problems. Of course, the running joke on much of television these days is the whole "time-out" thing, as in, if you talk back to your folks, are out of control in public, lie, or, apparently, instigate mass ethnic cleansing one too many times, you're slapped with a time out. You sit in the corner.

Now, as a punishment for today's ADHD younger generation, sure, maybe that works.

But it's something else that bothers me...

Back in my friggin day, it was a BAD thing to run around out of control in the supermarket...remember?!?!?!? How do we solve this problem? Well, you got a smackdown. Hell, you got a time out. You get SOMETHING that attempts to reinforce the idea that running around a public place like a store is potentially dangerous for any number of reasons.

Not anymore. Instead, it seems we not only tolerate this behavior, but encourage it and ENABLE it by outfitting children with the tools to move faster with less control!


Yes! Let's put friggin' roller skates in their friggin shoes!


Wow, can't imagine why no one thought of this before now. The benefits far outweigh the potential hazards.


The reason I bring up the supermarket, though, is that seems to be the only place where kids wear these things. That's the only place I've ever seen them. I kid you not. The whole lights in the shoes thing? That was dumb. Dumb, but potentially harmless. This?

"Oops. Clean up on aisle three. Some kid on skates ran into an old woman and FRIGGIN SHATTERED HER HIP!"


Actually, I'm the kind of person that presents a delightful target for such things. Mostly because I don't expect kids up to 12-13 years old to be zipping up and down the aisles of Harris Teeter with no regard and no mercy for others.

As a society, we are doomed. And don't even get me started on my job.

Oddyssey III: Final Destination II: The Last Final Stop at the End of the Final Journey, Gold Edition

Okay. So, now my little journey has been over for more weeks than it lasted, and I haven't finished the narrative. Which is fine, I guess. It's not that interesting, really. Still, I have other stuff I want to get to so let's get it out of the way.

When I landed in Grand Junction some weeks ago now, I found that, as I had feared, my bag was unavailable at the baggage claim.

Sadness.

But, I didn't mind that much. Afterall, my bag deserved its own fun little adventure. Figuring it had landed the night before, I walked over to the United Express counter to inquire after its fate.

25 minutes later, someone showed up at the counter to deal with customers (for an airport, albeit a small one, serving a general populace of approximately 100,000 people, you'd never suspect Walker Field Regional Airport to be as ass backwards as it is).

Turns out, surprise surprise, my bag didn't make it to GJ after all. Of course, I figured it was probably still in Denver. Oh no, that would make sense.

My bag decided it would rather hit the slopes than join me on my trip, so it hopped the plane to Eagle, CO. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the geography of Colorado, Eagle is a town in the mountains about midway between Grand Junction and Denver. Geographically, my bag had travelled about half way to where it needed to go. Unfortunately, in air travel terms, it pretty much went 180 degrees the wrong way. Eagle, like GJ, has a regional airport, which means that, yes, it's essentially a dead end. There are no flights from either place to other regional airports. Way to go, United. The excuse was that the label had been misread (some other bag ended up there too). Naturally, this would make perfect sense if the airport codes were similar, and since GJT and EGE do share a common letter, I have to assume that was the cause. Good one, guys.

But hey, I was on vacation. I ended up getting my bag at THE END OF THE NEXT DAY, nearly 48 hours after I was originally supposed to land. Still, I was at home, so it was no big deal.

What WAS a big deal, apparently, was the massive storm in the mountains that diverted all plans bound for Aspen to Grand Junction. This was amusing to no end. Baggage claim was full of angry Aspenites (peroxide bleached hair, fur jackets, absurdly expensive hand bags, etc) all whining into their cell phones in that annoying valley girl tone:

"Uhhh, we're, like, in this awful little town called, I don't know, Grand Junction? Oh my god, it's SUCH a hick town. I hope they didn't, like, lose my bag. My feet hurt SO much. I just hope they didn't lose the bag with my hiking boots, because these heels are KILLING me. I guess they, like, charted a bus or something? It's so stupid..."

And so on. This was, to say the least, intensely gratifying, in a way. It must suck to be those people.

And that was it. GJ was great, played with dogs, shot some birds, and relaxed. Chicago was also great, crashed at Mike and Liz's and played waaaaay too much Wii...made a Wii Mii. That was sweet. Then, Sarah surprised me at the airport in Charlotte and stayed with me for a few days, which was wonderful. So, in a sense, I had two weeks of break.

And then things went to crap. But that's another story.

Odd-yssey, Part II: The Return

*Cheesy announcer voice*:

In our last episode…

Anyway. Did I mention it was pouring rain in Charlotte? I got back to my car in the long term parking lot, having walked through the deluge, and drove around in circles until I found my way out of said long term lot…three hours after I parked in it.

This is all happening around rush hour, by the way.

But, whatever. I’m on vacation!

My drive home was just like a Navy Recruiting video. The only differences being: 1) Instead of a group of Navy Seals in wetsuits it was me in my rain soaked jacket, 2) instead of a tactical combat raft crashing through the surf (heh…I typed “serf” the first time) it was my explorer crashing through the rain and wet pavement on I-85, and 3) Instead of a Godsmack tune (“Awake”) dubbed over as a non-diagetic soundtrack element, I was singing along to the CD. So…really it was nothing like a Navy Recruiting video.

But, if you have the necessary Fortitude (DC: 35), you can imagine me singing along at the top of my lungs:

“I’m aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive, for yooooooou, I’m awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake…”

Had to swing by the CVS for some contact lens stuff (my kit was in my bag…still is, incidentally) and a frozen pizza, and then headed on home.

Didn’t do much, really…had some DiGiorno and played a bit of Jade Empire…because I’m only on my fourth play-through.

And then…

Got to the airport and MY GOD the line for security was long…finally, I was up to the front and…YES! Specialized screening! They put me in this…thing...which looked like a cross between an upright Jacuzzi and some kind of Star Trek transporter thing…and it…uh…blew jets of air on me. I think this was to analyze the air for explosives or such materials. (Apparently it's called a Trace Portal Machine, or a Puffer...)

That was odd. And then through the metal detector, and then stopped in the big glass box until they were ready to…*gulp*…oh, never mind, just going to take samples from your shoes and bag. Okay, you’re good.

I wonder about that, though. I mean, you take the little wipe thing and rub on the inside of someone’s shoe and find nothing "bomb" related, but does it check for other things too?

“Okay, Mr. Smith…no explosives in the conventional sense, but you might want to pick up a tube of tough acting Tinactin! BOOM! Ha ha!! …now get out of here before we kill you.”

And everything was smooth after that. Until I got to GJ…

Odd-yssey, Part 1

So, I’m in Colorado now, a day later (yesterday) than anticipated (Thursday night), but there it is.
Why a day later, you ask? Well, even if you didn’t ask, I’ll tell.

*Music plays*

…without singing, even.

*Music Stops*

The truth is, Chicago O’Hare International Airport and I go way back. Waaaaaaay back.
My first experience with O’Hare was not actually with the airport, but rather its namesake.




The O’Hare I knew was Edward "Butch" O’Hare, a WWII fighter pilot (and Medal of Honor winner).===>



It turns out that I was a bit of a nerd as a kid (not that much has changed, really) and some of my heroes (second only to John Elway) were American WWII fighter pilots like O’Hare, "Jimmy" Thach (of Thach Weave fame), and Pappy Boyington, first of the American Volunteer Squadron in China (Flying Tigers) and later of the Black Sheep squadron in the Pacific.

<==Boyington was probably my favorite, for a number of reasons. First, I was very interested in the Flying Tigers, since they were flying crappy old P-40 Warhawks before the US entered the war, and somewhat keeping up with the vastly superior Japanese fighters. Boyington was also cool because he coped with high-g turns by tensing the muscles in his neck (fighting physics with force of will).

Next, the Black Sheep!! (Who probably shouldn’t be judged by the TERRIBLE 70’s TV show, "Baa Baa Black Sheep", which, in my limited viewing experience, focused more on tight fitting uniforms and sappy 70’s comedy than, you know, dog fighting and such. Note that Robert Conrad doesn't really look like Pappy...as much, or at all.)

They flew my FAVORITE fighter, the Chance-Vought F4-U Corsair.

Yes, and many delightful hours of Aces of the Pacific on my old IBM 386. Gooooood times.

But I digress.

My ACTUAL history with O’Hare is more, you know, airport related. The only travel issues I’ve had have always been in someway related, like the time we sat on the plane for FOUR hours in Denver because thunderstorms were FORECAST around Chicago (skies were clear, as I recall). Also, the only time a flight has been cancelled (like, completely, totally, entirely wiped from the face of reality) was when Delta decided to cancel my flight from Salt Lake to Chicago for unknown reasons (though that might just be because they suck).

But this one was good. I was flying from Charlotte to Denver, no stop in Chicago, nothing. Except…oh yes…the plane was COMING from Chicago. And I’m told that there was a delay…because the roof was leaking. Oh yes. So, at first it wasn’t an issue, since I had a 2 hour layover in Denver. Of course, according to the surly woman behind the counter, it didn’t matter, and she didn’t know if it would work, so she tossed my bag check tag aside and walked away to help someone else, leaving me standing there looking like an ass for about 5 minutes.

That was cool.

Then the guy came over and helped me out, and said I was still okay. Cool, bag checked, things are good. Grabbed a sandwich, and hung around. THEN, the flight gets delayed again, screwing me totally. So, I was faced with the choice of getting to Denver and sleeping at DIA, or going home to my apartment, sleeping in my own bed, and flying out in the morning then getting to GJ at about the same time.

Tough one.

Anyway, I didn’t mind that much. I’m on vacation. The only time it got dodgy was when the line for the counter curved around a bit, meaning it was forming at a right angle behind me. Suddenly, this dip shit turns around and says… "You know, the end of the line is over there." I’ve been standing behind this guy for 10 minutes, which I tell him. Fortunately, one of the people behind me said that I had been there, and it was okay. But the guy gives me a look and doesn’t say anything. Now, usually, no matter what kind of mood I’m in, I won’t lash out at someone or raise my voice and use profanity (with people I don’t know, that is). I like to be civil. Seriously. But I was this close to letting fly at this guy. He had his wrangler jeans and boots and leather briefcase…so he’s one of THOSE assholes, some self-important prick from Greeley. It would have been…bad. Still, things were fine, the lady was nice, and set me up with a flight in the morning.

Of course, my checked bag…that was something else…better finish this later.