Friday, November 26, 2010

Going Through Airport Security: A Nevin Barich Blog Experience

Recently, I hopped on a plane for a 36-hour trip to Northern California to see my first-ever Stanford-Cal football game (Cal fans are psychos, by the way. They're like Raider fans, without the style and creativity). And as part of the plane-riding process, I had to go through one of life's less-enjoyable experiences:

Airport security.

Now please understand: I completely get and respect the reason for more airport security. The September 11 terrorist attacks were absolutely horrible and tragic, one of those events where everyone alive at the time will remember the exact moment that they heard the news. Having said that: Airport security is not only ridiculously annoying, but absolutely confusing.

Sorry to say, I am one of those people at airport security that others get stuck behind because he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. I mean, I am always baffled when I go through airport security. First, every time I grab a bin, I have trouble separating the damn things. I mean, everyone around me and their mother seems to be able to separate the bins with ease, but mine always seem to be stuck like glue. I can feel everyone else's eyes rolling as I struggle.

Then there's the shoes. I always forget to take off my shoes. And when I do take them off, I never remember whether I'm supposed to put them in a bin or not. For that matter, it's the same with laptops. When I take out my laptop, I put it in the bin and then put other stuff in the bin. But for some reason, you're supposed to keep the laptop separate in the bin. Otherwise, I guess, the X-ray machine won't be able to spot the bomb blueprints I have on my desktop.

When it's all said and done, I end up with eight bins, each of them filled with my own separate items because I'm all confused, a line has formed behind me, and the security guy is looking at me like he'd shoot me if he didn't fear God or the law.

And that's me and airport security in a nutshell.

Total time it takes me to go through security: 37 minutes.

Not including the time it takes to pat me down if I'm determined to be a terror risk.

:-)

And now for this week's:

SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE


Former NBA star Dennis Rodman received oral sex during a recent radio interview.

There's even audio.

And the funny part is that Rodman was the guy who called in.

I'm sure the radio host would've forgiven his tardiness.

7 comments:

Ivan said...

I thought you were a USC fan. What the hell were you doing at Stanford-Cal?

Nev said...

My wife Ramona is a Stanford grad. I went with her

Michael said...

CAL FANS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gloria said...

God, airport security is so annoying. It takes forever and accomplishes nothing. So dumb

Katherine said...

I don't get why they make you take off your shoes

James said...

It's because some terrorists have actually tried to hide small bombs or bomb materials in their shoes. Crazy I know

Mike said...

So YOU'RE the guy I'm always behind in airport security. Man....

Here's a primer for airport security:

Laptop- Separate bin, by itself

Shoes- Don't need to be in a separate bin, but the safest bet is on the actual belt itself, outside of a bin, although I've only actually had to do put them on the actual belt once

Everything else- One bin. Seriously. If you need more than two or three bins, you're doing something really, really wrong.