Day Zero
Plane trip from Portland to Oregon. Arrive at the airport a couple of hours early. Wait in line for an hour at the Southwest Airlines counter. Southwest sucks. More on that later. Wait for a half an hour to get through security. Grover usually wears a belt on that is basically a bandelero covered in fake empty bullets. Fortunately, it’s packed in his bag. In these days of heightened security, only ticketed passengers are allowed at the gates. Since we have e-tickets we need only present a print out of the email with our itinerary. Ours were wadded up in my back pocket, but apparently official enough to get us through without a hitch. I hurry through the metal detector to try and get a look at my skateboard as it goes through the x-ray bomb sniffing machine. It’s underwhelming. Since we’re flying Southwest we have to wait in line for 10 minutes at the gate also. This is because for some reason, Southwest Airlines can’t figure out how to assign you a seat when you check in at the ticket counter. Instead they do a sort of stadium seating in waves where you get a different color boarding pass depending on what order you check in. Then you sort of have to bum rush the plane when they call out your color. Usually there are a couple of retirees and uptight people who go out of turn. These people are dicks. They generally cause an already irritated passenger to become more irritated. Is that person trying to cut? Their group hasn’t been called. Are they retarded or just arrogant? Traveller’s tip: When dealing with line cutters, it’s advisable to always bump into them, spilling your drink or food on them on your way to the bathroom.
It’s time to board. I sling my backpack on my far shoulder opposite the flight attendant at the door to the gangway. They are already subjecting passengers to random security checks and I don’t want to give them any ideas about my skateboard. I think about clueing in Grover, but I don’t since he’s already irritated me by making me hold his place in line and hold his stuff while he first goes to the McDonald’s at security and later to the bathroom during boarding. I breeze through but I notice he’s not behind me. I start to walk back to the door and I hear nonsense about checking a skateboard with baggage. Is it a security risk? No. Is it a problem with size requirements? No. Is the flight full? No. The flight attendant is worried about damage to other people’s baggage. Is it because of the grip tape? No. It’s because if someone puts their luggage on top of the wheels, it might theoretically roll off! I drop my backpack and poke my head out to see what’s going on. I am rewarded by another flight attendant who squeals on me. In a very loud, disapproving tone she says “He had a skateboard too!” I try to explain that baggage couldn’t possibly roll off our skateboards, and even if it could, we’d have to orient the skateboard in a manner that was physically impossible for the overhead bin to accommodate, and what about everyone else’s carry on luggage with wheels? Can we put them under the seat? No. Because my Indy backpack is poorly designed, I strap my board with the wheels to the pack to avoid grip tape burn. I show this to the attendant and he reluctantly agrees that it his point is moot. For some reason he’s even more reluctant to accept my reasoning that Grover need only reverse his instead of removing his wheels. When we finally get past him, Grover can’t fit his bag in the overhead, so he takes his board off his backpack and slides it in. Whereupon a completely different flight attendant tells him he should check his skateboard with the luggage, causing Grover to lament in a very loud voice “Why does everyone want to take away my skateboard? Everyone hates skateboards!” This made the passengers very uncomfortable, especially the flight attendant. We were still settling in when three coeds were making their way past our row and Grover proclaimed in an equally loud voice that he hoped no girls sat next to us. Needless to say, they didn’t.
Next Day: Start work?
