See The World They Said...

I travel.  I travel a lot.  What is a lot?  For some context, these past 4 months I have flown over 150,000 miles.  All domestically. 

There is a big difference between what I do, and what my friends and family think I do, especially when it comes to this travel. 

• Them: “You are so lucky.  You get to see the world and visit new and exciting places”
• Me: “Damn it, I think I am in a middle seat”

So, to set the record straight, let’s examine my travel day.  

Lines, Lines and More Lines

• Let's pretend you already have your ticket.  Upon arriving at the security checkpoint , the first big choice is knowing which line to go on.  The best advice I can give here is find the one I am going on, and pick the opposite.   Invariably I get stuck behind either
• The person who hasn’t travelled since 1973 and therefore has decided to bring a big-gulp sized bottle of Shampoo that they are now longer able to carry on.
• The couple with the kid.  Yeah, that kid.  The one who doesn’t listen, climbs on the conveyor belt and lingers in the X-Ray with a spider thinking he is going to be the next Spiderman.

Break on Through to the Other Side (of Security)

• If you are going through the security process and if by accident you forget to take that tube of Chap Stick out of your bag, be prepared to get searched like you tried crossing the Turkish border with 7 kilo’s of drugs.
• Once YOU are through, you need to wait for your bags on the conveyor belt.  The best analogy I can give is that it is like trying to catch the Ice-Cream man when you were a kid.  Running after the little bus yelling STOP Ice Cream Man, Stop!  Only this time, you are running after your shoes, your belt and your bags – all while the 19 year old TSA guy who was turned down from the “Fry job” at McDonalds continues to run the conveyor belt as your bags pile up.  So you shuttle along the length of the belt trying to grab your things, while avoiding other passengers like Mario avoiding the barrels from Donkey Kong until finally all the stuff crashes into each other and creates more of a mess than Lindsay Lohan’s acting career. 

Now Boarding...Zone Crazy People 

• Ok you got through security, now you need to find your gate.  Simple right?  Well, not so fast.
• A typical gate announcement goes like this “*gum chewing*, uh, yeah, for those of you on flight 3628-niner…your flight has been delayed.  Your new gate is…” – at that point every passenger looks for their flight number (did she say niner?) as it is the one piece of information that nobody knows or cares about.  When you finally locate the number you look up and hear…”*gum chewing*…thank you”
• When they finally line people up to board – they are very clear in saying that they will board by group number.  “Ok, now boarding Group 1”  As soon as this is said, every single passenger in the waiting area tries to board like this is the last flight out and a horde of Zombies is marching down towards the gate.
• Now, given that you actually are group 1, you almost get to the front of the line…that is until some guy in a business suit pushes aside a nun, steps on a 5 year old kid on crutches and then tries to pass you saying HE is in group 1.

• The main driver behind the mad dash for the plane is, like the Titanic and lifeboats, there is only limited overhead space for 5 carry-on bags for 237 passengers.  
• As you walk on, feeling that stress, you see an open space…DAMN, someone else took it.  Oh wait there is another.  You go to put your bag up and there is a sport coat laying down in the overhead space.  Seriously, some guy took off his sport coat and lay it down in the space?  You do the polite thing and push your bag up and scrunch up the coat and sit down.
• Great, you are finally seated…in the aisle no less.  Things are good.  Uh oh, someone sits in the window seat.  Now with seats filling up quick you know that someone will be in the middle seat.  Now you start evaluating and judging your fellow passengers.  Here comes a skinny girl…yes, yes, please yes…damn it, she walked by.  Here comes someone who looks like they talk a lot.  No, no, no…whew, they walked by.  Uh oh, here comes a fairly large person…no god please no, please nooooo

 In-Flight

• You sit down, get ready to “relax and enjoy your flight”…until the person in front of you reclines right into your lap.  Now you can’t get your laptop or book open and you’re sitting there starring at the top of their head like you are about to give them a haircut.  What do you do? The only thing a civilized person should do.  Talk to them? No…
• …You knee them in the back.  Rather than sitting up, they instead put all their weight into reclining back as far as they can.  Ok, you will deal with it…until the kid behind you starts kicking your seat.  At least the parents of the kid will reprimand them right…parent?  Hello Parents????
• Oh well, you will just get up, stretch your legs and use the rest room.  You enter and immediately discover that anyone over the height of 3’7” is in trouble.  You have to bend at the knees just to avoid the curved ceiling, lift up the seat of the toilet with your foot (because eww) try to keep it from dropping while you do your business.  You then hit the flight attendant call button because you thought that was the button for flushing and now you have drawn attention to yourself.  You hit the water to wash your hands but it only runs for about .00007 seconds before turning off.  You leave, head down in shame.

• You return to your seat and then the turbulence starts.  You immediately recall all your childhood prayers and say the “Our Father” about 17 times, you promise that you will call your parents every day, you will always say (and mean) I love you to people, you will never be mean to anyone ever again and you will…..oh wait, turbulence is over.  Now I can be mean to that ass reclining in front of me.
• You finally land and as you get ready to deplane, the other customers appear to have forgotten that there is etiquette for leaving the plane.  Row by row people like we learned in the 1^st grade.  Nope, evidently Ricky-Bobby from row 18 decides that he needs to get ahead of everyone as he pushes his way up the 18 inch aisle to try to get off the plane first like it is an Olympic sport.
• If you checked your luggage, at the gate or ticketing, you now enter into your own version of Russian roulette.  Click…bag didn’t come out….click…damn it, where is it…click…crap it’s only me and this other guy….crap he got his bag…. 

Ah, you are done

You kick off your week in your new destination by changing to the local time zone which basically means that for breakfast you want a bacon cheeseburger.  You get into Taxi’s that smell worse than that pig pen kid from Charlie Brown.  You spill coffee on your shirt and then spend the afternoon trying to cover it up.  You go to the hotel gym only to realize that the only machine they have was last used in 1856 - and it still has a line of 16 people waiting to use it.

At the end of the week, you go to the airport and start the whole process again.  Yes, the same old security buffoonery, plane delaying, Airplane bathroom crouching, child kicking business man reclining overhead bin using stress.  

You are finally back home...”here take the kids!”

How to Avoid Getting Killed By A Tube of Toothpaste & Other Useful Israeli Travel Tips

I recently spent a few days (yes days) in Israel.  All it took was a 1.5 hour flight to my connection, a 6 hour layover, and then the 11 hour flight to Tel Aviv.  However, the flight wasn’t the bad part of it, it was actually the anticipation.  Anticipation for what you may ask.  Well just Google “Israeli Airport Security” and you will see.  When I Googled it, I got two responses.

1)       Israel upset with Iran, may plan attack on nuclear stations

2)       Going through Israeli security is like getting a colonoscopy and tooth extraction at the same time, yet not as pleasant

So going in, I had already planned to either be on the news as someone drafted into Attack Force 1 heading into Iran, or I would be spending my time in an Israeli airport detention center trying to explain why I had 4 pairs of underwear for a 3 day stay. 

Getting Into Israel

So after all this research about security, I show up at the airport basically feeling guilty already for something.  I don’t know what that something was, but I knew that these well trained agents would uncover whatever it was I was hiding.  By the time I got to my first security checkpoint I was already confessing “YES, it was me who stole little Mary’s candy bar in the 4^th grade, but I’M SORRRY!!!!”  Well, he didn’t care much about Mary and her poor candy, but he did stare me down and keep asking me questions over and over.  Are you sure you packed this by yourself, is there any chance you’re not remembering it correctly, is your real name Kaiser Sose?”

He then looks at my passport and some other paperwork I had and asks me to remain where I am as he goes off to talk to his supervisors.  I wait about 15 minutes, which in security time feels about 6 hours, and he returns and asks “Are you sure you didn’t have anyone else pack your bags”.  I finally convince him that, yes, despite my appearance, I am more than capable of packing my own bags, and I went on my way.

After 6 hours of waiting for my flight to take off, I go through TSA security, which, let’s be honest, comparing TSA to  Israeli security, is like comparing Cy Young to Richard Pryor’s Montgomery Brewster of the Hackensack Bulls.  Here is another comparison; TSA will take away my toothpaste if it is 3.1 ounces.  Israeli security will kill me with that same 3.1 ounce tube of toothpaste.

Anyway, I get to the gate and there are people in various lines (Economy, Business, First) waiting in what appears to be an orderly fashion.  So I get in line and do what normal civilized people have been doing for generations, which is, actually waiting in the line.  As soon as the gate agent picks up the microphone to ask for people needing extra assistance to board the plan, the entire area bum rushed the gate.  Seriously, you would have thought that only 4 golden tickets have been found and beyond the gate lay the last case of Wonka Bars.  That or everyone in the gate area just heard their soccer team won (or lost).  I kid you not; people were pushing and shoving, forgetting any semblance to the once orderly line (or civilization).  Mind you, these weren’t the people who actually needed the extra assistance, oh no, those poor people in the wheel chairs had no chance!

So, I still try to maintain some level of order before the chaos turned into anarchy, and what do you know, I get to the agent, they look at my passport and pause.  Then they look at me quizzically and ask if I spoke Hebrew.  When I said I don’t, they looked at the passport again, and said – “But it says here that you do” referring to some scribbles the previous security guard wrote down.  “I assure you miss, I barely speak English and I think the only Hebrew I know is “Hebrew National” Hotdogs.  Needless to say, I was asked to wait (as everyone else continued shoving past me).  She consulted her supervisors and I watched them having a discussion, pointing at my passport and in my hysteria imaging they are saying “Should we take him out here, or have our agents in Tel Aviv do away with him?  She finally comes back to me and as I am preparing to make a run for it, she says “Have a good flight”…and that’s it.  No explanation, nothing.

On the Plane

It is a sad state of affairs when I can get on a plane, eat a big dinner, watch a movie, go to sleep, wake up, and still have hours of flying to go!  I actually kid about the watch a movie part…well sort of.  The airline had several movies to choose from, so I chose Killer Elite.  The problem was, it would play for about 7 minutes and then stop and restart…constantly.  So I would start to get into the movie only to be brought back to the beginning.  So while I watched about an hour of the movie, it was the first 7 minutes over and over.  I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, although I didn’t really learn any new skills, and I didn’t drive angry!  Spoiler alert, nothing really happens in the first 7 minutes.  I can only assume that Robert Deniro ended up being the bad guy in an “I see dead people” plot twist. 

The other interesting thing on waking up was that I came out of a poor sleep and was a little groggy, and when I look up I see 5 people by the plane door, in what I assumed to be a frantic attempt to open the door 37,000 feet up in the air.  No one else seemed to be worried however, and I was eventually educated that they were praying.

To further show my ignorance, when dinner was served, I received a full course meal, with my main dish being a beef stew.  When I got my warm dinner role, I looked around, saw I was missing something, and asked the flight attendant for butter.  I was told, no, I cannot have butter.  I was a little perplexed, I said why; can I not have butter miss?  Did I do something?  Evidently it was a kosher plane.  Later in the flight, one of my seat mates asked me if I was Jewish.  Well actually he said “You’re not Jewish right?” So I said “did the butter thing give me away?”

Getting back to the US

All I can say is thank you for whatever form my company filled out.  It was basically like I had a hall pass.  Now I know what feels like to be one of the untouchables.  I walked right pass Elliott Ness, showed my form and my passport and away I went.  OK, it wasn’t that easy, but it was nowhere near the experiences I read online.

All in all it actually was a great, if short trip.  I was able to have a couple of nice dinners out on the town with extremely friendly people, was always treated respectfully, even though I did not understand the language, and  was only disappointed that I was unable to stay longer to visit other areas of the country.