July 16, 2011
Travel Department
Maryland Revisited
I just drove through Maryland a few weeks ago, and now I'm back, this time on business. One of my on-again, off-again clients has a bit of work that I'm suited for, so I flew out here for a meeting.
Yeah, that's right. I flew. For the first time in about 11 years.
My lack of flying had nothing to do with 9/11. I've always disliked flying -- getting through the airport traffic, all the walking around, all the standing in lines, the tedium of security -- it grates at me. I can remember back in the late '90's or maybe 2000, I had flown out to D.C. for some meeting, and I was standing around waiting for something at Dulles, and I realized that I probably had another 30 years of waiting around in airports ahead of me. As it turned out, that was one of the last flights I ever took. I stopped working full time in 2001 and never had a reason to fly again.
Until now.
Air travel was pretty much how I remembered it, except that I arranged the whole trip myself online instead of having the company's travel agent do it. And, of course, security was even slower. I didn't have to go through the nudie-pic X-ray machine, but maybe that will change on the return trip. The truth is that it doesn't bother me as much as you might think from reading this blog. (Besides, the punishment for taking nudie pictures of me is that you have to look at nudie pictures of me.)
Don't get me wrong, I still hate the TSA. It's kind of like when a clerk at a store swears in front of me. The swearing itself doesn't bother me at all. However, he doesn't know that. For all he knows, I might be easily offended by swearing, yet he goes ahead and swears anyway. He doesn't respect me enough to care that I might be offended. And that offends me.
It's the same with the TSA. I don't mind so much that they intrude on my privacy, but I hate them for not giving a damn about my privacy. Someday, when the worm turns, I want them all to lose their jobs. Every smiling, friendly, blue-costumed asshole TSA agent in the country.
The weirdest part of security, though, was having to take off my shoes. I'd read about the TSA making people take off their shoes, of course, and knew intellectually that it was coming, but until I actually did it, I couldn't quite believe something that stupid was for real.
When I got to Baltimore, I had a little trouble finding the offices where we were meeting. The rental car GPS had never heard of those streets. I used my phone's Maps app to find a nearby intersection, and the GPS knew about it, but it tried to take me there via Fort Meade, home of the NSA. I managed to turn around before running into checkpoints full of armed guards.
Anyway, the meeting went well, and then a few of us went out to dinner. One of the guys had heard about a resturant called Maiwand Kabob in Columbia, and we decided to try it. The GPS got us there safely, and it turned out to be a tiny little store-front middle eastern restaurant in a mall. I decided to order the beef-and-chicken kabob, and when one of the other guys ordered that, I said, "I'll have the same thing."
I'd misheard, however. He'd actually ordered the lamb-and-chicken kabob. I don't generally like lamb, but I went ahead with it anyway, which turned out to be a good idea. Apparently, I don't like lamb because I've never had it prepared properly. If you ever find yourself in the area with a taste for middle eastern food, you could do a lot worse than Maiwand Kabob.
Anyway, I'm just about to pack up and head for the airport. My flight isn't for 4 hours, but I'd rather get there early. The only thing worse than waiting around in an airports is rushing through airports.
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