Attaboy

I experienced an interesting situation last Friday night, even though I didn’t realize it until the next day. Something happened that made me question both the quality of airport security and the humanity of a fellow citizen.

Yesterday was Kelly’s and my 29th wedding anniversary. I was due home this weekend for the Jaguar-Bills game and we decided to celebrate on Saturday night with a nice dinner out.

Last weekend, I went gift shopping. I chose (with some suggestion assistance from Kel) a lovely Ralph Lauren gift box. The kit contained a large spray bottle of Lauren’s Romance cologne, along with tubes of Romance bath gel and body lotion. I loved the scent and knew it would smell terrific on Kel, so the decision was easy.

I packed Thursday night so I could leave directly from work on Friday afternoon. My goal for my weekend trips home is to pack light, taking only carry-on. I have a house full of clothing in Florida and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give these schmuck airlines any more money than I have to. (Props, however, to Southwestfor giving you two free checked-in bags). I squeezed everything into my roll-away bag, and wondered about bringing a cigar lighter home. I needed one down there and I’ve recently collected a few free ones from JR Cigars’ retail store in the city. I decided against it…my luck, they would see the lighter in its little box and make me toss it. The lighters were free, but I won’t toss one just to satisfy them. I’ll just use matches when I get home.

I’ve chosen to fly Southwest for the next few trips home, mainly because of the evil fare increases by US Airways. US Air is really convenient, because Reagan National Airport is about a fifteen-minute walk from the house where I’m staying in Arlington, and it’s three stops on the DC Metro to and from the Pentagon. But I did a little cost comparison and discovered that Southwest would charge me nearly $100 less for the same flight (including all the fees), non-stop to Jacksonville and back. The big difference would be that the flight down there would leave about an hour later then the comparable US Air flight. The return fligh would get me back to the area at the same approximate time.

The other major difference using Southwest: I’d have to fly from Baltimore-Washington International (BWI), about 40 miles up the road. But I had a choice regarding how to get up there as well.

I could drive, then pay about $10 per day to park. That would essentially wipe out about half of my fare savings, not to mention gas. Driving through rush hour traffic both ways was no picnic, something to which anyone who lives here can attest.

But there are two mass transit alternatives. I could take the DC Metro from the Pentagon to Union Station in the city, then grab the MARC commuter train up to BWI. There’s a stop a short distance from the airport, with free shuttles to the terminal. The Metro fare would be about 1.85 and the MARC fare is $6 one way.

I could also take the Metro Green Line to the Greenbelt, Maryland station (about $4), and grab a DC Metro bus to BWI for $3. The bus, unlike the MARC train, drops you off right outside the terminal.

The decision is one of balance. The MARC train doesn’t have the issue of traffic heading up to the airport. On the return trip, the Metro bus leaves more frequently then the MARC train. Since I arrive at BWI on Monday mornings after the peak of the regional rush hour, the bus ride to Greenbelt shouldn’t be too bad.

Anyway, I chose to take the MARC train up to the airport on Friday night. I’m now kicking myself for that decision, to some degree. When I arrived at Union Station, the place was as crowded as you would expect at 5:30 PM on a Friday evening. I purchased a ticket and headed over to the proper track to wait. Then the announcements began: the 6:05 train to Baltimore was running at least 30 minutes late. The 6:40 train to Baltimore was ten to fifteen minutes behind it, and would also be significantly delayed.

Somehow, I managed to squeeze onto that late 6:05 train and the trip northward began at about 7:10. When I arrived at the BWI MARC station at about 7:55, there wasn’t a terminal shuttle to be had, just a row of taxis waiting for the delayed train. I knew taking a cab to the terminal would screw up my cost-savings ratio a little, but my flight was at 8:40 and was the last one out that night. I had not been home in about a month. The cab would be worth the cost. We squeezed four people in, so the fare came to seven bucks, not too bad considering how quickly he hustled us to the terminal.

I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of a long security line (and BWI doesn’t take any preferred traveler cards yet), but I was fortunate there was no wait at the screening point at all, probably due to the later hour. I pulled the laptop from my bag, dropped my shoes and bag on the belt and waltzed through the metal detector. Five minutes later, I was on my way to the gate. The A-list passengers were just lining up to board, and the rest of the flight went without a hitch.

On Saturday morning, Kelly and I exchanged gifts. We agreed not to spend a lot (we want to take a cruise to Canada and Nova Scotia for our 30th), and we kept the bargain. Kelly gave me a Jaguars’ players game jersey with David Garrard’s name and number, the first player jersey I’ve ever owned in all my years as a football fan.

When she opened the box with the Lauren gift set, she was vary happy. She tried the cologne, which smelled wonderful on her, as I expected. Then she asked me the question of the weekend:

“How did you get this on the plane?”

At that moment, I was a bit stunned. I had no logical answer to the question. The bottle of perfume alone should have been enough for the TSA examiner to make me remove the package from my carry-on bag. The lotion tubes were apparently within the three-ounce limit, but that cologne bottle was much more than that. I also didn’t have it hidden in my bag in any way: the gift box was a little heavy, and it was wrapped in the pseudo-plastic bag they placed it in at Macy’s.

That I had this thing in violation of the rules never occurred to me. Even on the flight, I smelled the strong aroma of perfume near my seat. I worried that the bottle in my bag might have spilled or, worse, broken on the way, but all was well when I pulled the package from the suitcase and examined it on the plane. (The smell was from some woman passenger who apparently bathed in her perfume).

In discussing my good fortune of not getting “caught” with this illicit material in my bag, Kelly wondered if I would have missed my flight if they made me go to the ticket counter and check the bag. Fortunately, that counter is very close to the screening point, just about a two-minute walk, so I’m sure I could have checked the case and boarded in time. I might have been sitting in the middle or back of the plane with Southwest’s open seating, but I was going to get on that plane no matter what.

After this incident, I’m curious about something: I still can’t imagine that the lady sitting at the bag screener didn’t see the bottle in my case. Had the laptop still been in the case, that might have blocked it, but there wasn’t more than a layer of clothing between the upright side of the case and the gift box as it rolled through the x-ray machine. There were other oddly-shaped objects in the bag: the AC adapter for the laptop, the laptop battery (which I always remove before packing the computer), my medical pill boxes, my eyeglass and sunglass cases. Perhaps the screener saw all these objects in shadows on the screen and never got a good look at that perfume bottle. Maybe it was obstructed by something else.

Or maybe, just maybe, she knew I was hurrying for a flight and let it through, preventing me from having a last-minute hassle.

I’m not going to consider it as ineptness on the part of the screener. They have a thankless job, and most of them do it pretty well. We collectively complain about the degrading way we have to be examined prior to boarding an airplane, but, trust me, it could be a lot worse. There are restrictions in places like Israel that would make the typical American traveler blow like a pressure cooker. And their airports are protected by Israeli military personnel, carrying large, scary guns. There’s probably very little “terminal rage” at the airport in Tel Aviv.

Perhaps it was just the confluence of items in my bag, lying at a certain angle, just enough to make the screener think it was something innocuous.

Or, maybe, just maybe, she was being human. She was pretty close to the end of her shift, and she saw me hurrying for a flight. Maybe she just decided to cut a slightly-weary traveler a break and let me get home to see my wife and my daughter.

Yeah, I like that last one the best. That’s my story.

And I’m sticking to it.