You Can't Make Mistakes

Nightmare night

Since you last heard from me, I have been lost in the bellies of various airplanes and then was delivered into the hungry maw of homeland security.extra It’s been real, and it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.

Our flight out of Heathrow was delayed, which I somehow knew instinctively. Something always has to go wrong at Heathrow. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be Heathrow. What I wasn’t banking on, though, was “scheduled maintenance” which would delay us for 3 and a half hours.

Now, I would think that if you were going to schedule maintenance on a plane, you would schedule it for a time when said plane wasn’t about to taxi. This is not how it is done, however. Once we all boarded the flight, it was really quite pleasant. There was really no one on the plane: it was mostly empty, which meant that each passenger got at least two seats and loads of leg-room. Sweet. The crew was funny too. They didn’t give a shit since there were so few of us, so it was very laid back. I got some much needed sleep finally.

When we arrived at Dulles, however, it was a different story entirely.

We were first ushered onto the weird Dulles airport shuttle thing. It’s like a really uncomfortable waiting room, with tightly packed seats, except that the whole thing moves and changes levels depending on where it is and where it needs to go. It is a creepy prelude to the nightmare that Homeland Security/Customs and Border Patrol will then inflict.

You can imagine that I was really looking forward to the body cavity searches that I would be receiving, having just lived in North Africa for 8 months. I have to say, they took it easy on me. I think that the guy who questioned me was a rookie though, he didn’t really know what to ask and just seemed kind of nervous.

I did get extra-special service though—not the ultra-special, wait in a room for hours and hours and then be body-cavity searched version though. They just wrote in huge letters all over my form and then sent me off to a special line with all of the Latinos, Arabs, and anyone else who was brown. I was the only white guy. It was nice. Made me feel at home again, like in Cairo.

So I get to the front of the line finally and the guy that got stuck with me was alright. He was a little green, but friendly—and thorough. He aksed me question after question about my program, my teachers, how I met my tutors. My favorite was when he caught a glance of the load of Quranic studies books and asked me if any of my studies were of a religious. He was, of course, hoping that I would slip up and admit to having been drafted into the ranks of some extremist group.

I haven’t, by the way.

I said “Yes, I’m a religionist by training, so I study the religious texts as well.”

Then finally, after having decided that I was not going to be a threat to our great nation. I was allowed through, back onto American soil.

Thankfully it was really late, so my plans were shot, and I decided to just wait for my flight to come up in wee hours—now swiftly approaching.

I tried to find someone to take my bags off me again, but no one was at any of the desks for Northwest Airlines, so I had to schlep around the airport with 60 kg of luggage, desperate for a coffee.

I thought that was bad, until the time came when I could check in for the connecting flight to Detroit and woman decided to charge me for my bags. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Apparently,even though I had just come 10,000 miles with these heavy bags, now I had to pay $50 to get them another 500 miles home. She said she couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t been charged in the first place as she had never heard of an airline with a 30 kg weight limit before (both Virgin and British Airways have a 30 kg weight limit, FYI). Bastards. It’s just an example of a sinking American carrier scheme to get a few more nickels and dimes.

It’s amazing how I didn’t have any troubles with airline employees until I landed in the United States. Surprise, surprise.

But I’m better now, I just found Vitamin Water in the airport while waiting for the flight. It went well with the rest of my Xanax. I’ll have a nice relaxing nap on the plane.