December 24, 2001
  Travel's a bitch

Travel was a bitch and she didn't mind showing it. I was in the news. Did you see me? I was the short, round-headed, dead-eyed one at the end of a nine-mile, two hour line at San Francisco Airport on Christmas Eve. It wasn't the security line, either. It was . . .

. . . Somebody better invent a teleporter, and somebody better invent it now, dammit.

I got to the train station in time to meet the 5:59 train, which would get me to the airport by 6:30. It was bitterly cold and dark; I was lugging around my mother's forty pound suitcase, originally designed by Samsonite to smuggle fat hockey players through customs from Canada. I'd borrowed it in a fit of madness on my way back from my last visit to Seattle, over Thanksgiving; only right that I should return it to her, where it could eat up space in her four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, half-acre lot house in the suburbs of Bellevue, as opposed to my nine-foot square walk-in closet that makes up approximately 30% of my total living space here in Redwood City.

Of course it started to rain halfway between my house and the train station. Of course I was wearing a white shirt that, when wet, became a radical proponent of the Freedom of Information Act. Of course my mother's suitcase has a total of, count them, three wheels, none of which point in the same direction. And of course, at five-thirty in the morning, there's some sort of cultural collective of wide-awake, horny young men drinking Zima on the corner by Albertsons under a schizophrenic street light.

And of course, the day before, a man was overpowered on an airplane with bad things in his shoes, bad things that would have made travel in the plane very difficult, holes and explosions and smoke inhalation aside.

"At least," thought I on the train, sinking down into a seat to pick at my shirt to create little tents over my nonexistent, yet somehow irresponsibly perky, breasts. "At least I'll have plenty of time to nap at the gate."

The free shuttle from the train dropped me off in front of the Alaska Airlines baggage claim. It was empty inside, from all I could tell. I felt much smugness. Airport was deserted. See? Nobody travels on Christmas Eve. It was a smart choice.

The complacency lasted until I got upstairs to the ticketing floor, where I discovered that the city of San Francisco had moved in for the holidays. That's right. Six million, seven hundred and eighty three thousand, seven hundred and sixty people. All of them, travelling for Christmas.

The queue for the ticket counter took two hours to get through. At one point, one of the customer service agents trolled the line, all four miles of it, calling out names of destinations. "Palm Springs, Seattle, Mexico City! Palm Springs, Seattle, Mexico City?! Palm Springs, Seattle, Mexico City!"

I perked up. Was it possible that there would be a separate line for those of us with earlier flights? Those of us whose planes were due to leave in exactly an hour and a half? Those of us who still couldn't see the ticket counter because it was on the other side of the airport, and wouldn't have been able to see it anyway because we were surrounded by nine-foot tall ex-Marines with big hair and body odor problems?

I waved my little arm and shouted after her. She ignored me and disappeared towards the end of the line. "I'll catch her on her way back," I decided.

Ten minutes passed. Fifteen minutes passed. Twenty minutes passed. Then, suddenly, she was walking back towards me again from the other direction, still chanting her list of destinations. "Palm Springs?! Seattle?! Mexico City?!"

I yelped loudly at her and waved both arms, jumping up and down. She paused, mostly because I managed to hook her by the elbow and dragged her to a standstill.

"I'm going to Seattle," I said, hopefully. She was very good looking.

"Is that your final destination?" she asked. It was already eight a.m. I nodded brightly.

"You're in the right line," she told me, patted my hand to make me let go, and sped off.

I changed my mind. She wasn't good-looking at all. Also, I decided, I didn't like her much.

Hating her helped pass the time during the next forty-five minutes, which is how long it took me to get checked in, receive a boarding pass, and tell the customer service agent that I wasn't carrying anything that would blow up the plane and kill thousands of people.

They didn't believe me. They sent me through security anyway. Why do they ask if they're going to make you go through security anyway? It makes no sense. 8:40 a.m. I checked my ticket. Did I say I was leaving at 9:30 a.m.? I lied. My plane was leaving at 9:05 a.m. Goodie.

In order to find the line to get to the gate, the one that went through security, I had to actually start at the security gate. Then I had to trace the queue of people to Greenland. San Francisco airport isn't really that small; it's a long walk to go all the way around the airport. I had to walk all the way around the airport, up to the International wing entrance. That's because the security line stretched all the way to the end of the airport, and then looped around outside. It took me three minutes to get to the end of the line at a good, steady jog, ignoring pauses for crying babies, fat suitcases, and an enthusiastic security officer who thought I was running away from him.

When I found the end of the line, I was outside and getting rained on again. My shirt, which had dried during the ticketing wait, immediately began looking for bare skin to cling to.

"Please, please, please tell me this isn't the end of the line to get through security," I said, pathetically.

A small group of people standing under actual shelter waved me back. "It's over that way," one of them said, and pointed. "Welcome to hell. Merry Christmas."

At 8:50, a tall, muscle-bound man wearing a uniform of some sort came to collect me from the end of the line. "If your plane is leaving before 9:05 a.m.," he yelled to the masses, "Follow me!"

He took off. I checked my ticket. 9:03 a.m. I peeled out of the line to follow him, getting further and further behind as more people extricated themselves to join the ragged duckling chain. I fixed my eyes on back of this man's head, using it as a north star; it's possible that he had the most beautiful skull I've ever seen.

At 9:05, I was taking my shoes off for security, and padding through the metal detectors on stockinged feet. The shoes went through the X-ray machine, where they made unspeakable combinations with radioactivity.

At 9:06, I was on the plane.

"We saw it on the news," my sister told me on the phone that night, from her boyfriend's parents' home. "There were people missing planes, international flights, everything, because the security lines and stuff were so long."

"I told you so," said the Guy. He'd used the travails of airline travel as an excuse to get out of coming back to Seattle with me. Over the phone, he sounded unbearably smug. "I knew it would be bad. What did I say about airline travel?"

"I hate you," I told the Guy, conversationally.

Merry Christmas.