Pt 3 Arizona or maybe Rice Milk Will Not Crash a Plane part 3

It is off to phase two of the security. Child #6 could not drink cows milk. She could only drink rice milk. Now we got all eight of our tickets for free with our frequent flyer miles and the only catch was that we would have to spend the night in Dallas on our way home. We would arrive in Dallas at 10:00 pm and leave the next morning at 5:00 AM. That would leave no time to go to a store. So our carry on bags had to have anything that we would need for over night, including rice milk for the baby. Now, I knew from going to the airport and airline security websites that we might be allowed to get her milk on the plane. It is at the discretion of the security personnel.

We are standing in line with about 50 other people. We take off our shoes and put them on the conveyor, take the baby out of her stroller, put her humongous car seat on, unpack our video camera, empty our pockets, and tell the security people about the milk. It is important here to get a full understanding of the events and spirit of the situation. About 50 people who DO NOT WANT to be in line behind us who are all talking, a recording over the loud speaker continually reminding us of the 3-1-1 rule (3 ounce bottle or less (by volume) ; 1 quart-sized, clear, plastic, zip-top bag; 1 bag per passenger placed in screening bin. One-quart bag per person limits the total liquid volume each traveler can bring. 3 oz. container size is a security measure.)a man who keeps shouting that if we need one quart zip-top bags he has some and where the garbage cans are for containers that are larger than 3 ounces, security people talking- well they were mostly yelling, machines beeping, "puff machine" puffing (that is a machine that sends a puff of air at you and then "smells" the air looking for the scent of explosives).

I declare the milk first, before we do anything else and the security person (SP from here on out) tells me to "leave it out". I am not really sure what that means so I held it in my hands. Well, then SP #1 yelled at me to put it in its own bin. I guess that is what is meant by "leave it out". I can see that the car seat is not going to go into this machine, and the SP can tell too. He tells me to take it apart and I assure him that it does not come apart. Well, eager to show me just how much of an idiot I must be, he begins tugging on different parts of the seat until he relents. Maybe the person who owns and operates the car seat, does actually know something about it. One of them, SP#2, whom I might mention, sat in a seat across the corridor the entire time and not once did I see her get up, yelled at me to turn the seat over. So I turned it over. I guess I did not turn it over the right way, so she yelled some more for me to turn it over. This went on and on until I figured out what the rude SP meant. I am still baffled at why she could not simply get up and turn the seat herself. So finally the car seat will go forward.

Each member of the family has gone through the metal detector without an ounce of fan fair. Life is looking GOOD! I am the last member of the family. I give each child his or her shoes and bag and send them to the end of the corridor with Dad to reduce the confusion. As each bag is scanned by the machine SP#1 watches the monitor closely (You need to imagine seeing my right eyebrow go up as if to say, "Yeah right". I will explain more about that later) and he elbows the SP#3 next to him and says, "look at this". The SP#3 says, "Close it down and call the police". WHAT??!?!! It is rice milk for crying out loud. I keep thinking if they will just ask me about it I can explain to them my babies dietary needs, but no, you have to really stress the "no" when you say that in your head- but noooooo, no one asks me about it. They just close the line and scream "CLOSE THE LINE, CLOSE THE LINE, CLOSE THE LINE. GO TO THE OTHER LINE!!!!!" Oh, for crying out loud- you think the other 50 people were a little annoyed before one of the two lines were closed, imagine how thrilled they were now.

Pt 2 Arizona or maybe Rice Milk Will Not Crash a Plane part 2

Okay, so with my cart full of luggage, I approach the counter. I am completely organized and I know what I am doing. Each child, except for number 4, is sitting quietly (sort of, well as quiet as five young people can be) and I hand the woman behind the counter one boarding pass. She types some stuff on her computer, asks me a question or two about the person for whom the boarding pass has been issued, takes one bag, puts the tag on the bag and hands the bag to me. I hand the bag to child #4 who then takes the bag over to the x-ray machine and onto the conveyor belt, where we wave (telepathically anyway, we wouldn't want people to really see us WAVING good bye to luggage) and then he returns to the counter with me where we, unceremoniously begin the process again. Now we are at bag number four when she decides to ask some questions about the baggage. The questions go something like this, "Do you have any blah blah blah" or maybe it was more like, "Oh, you wouldn't happen to have any blah blah blah packed would you" or something else along those lines. While the way the question was presented isn't really that important the blah blah blahs ARE! The blah blah blahs are flammable things like matches, fireworks, lighters, etc. Not wanting to be the cause, or effect, of a mid-air explosion I say, "Well, we do have caps for a cap gun packed". Errrrrrrr!!!!!! Did you hear the breaks on the machine we call progress stop short?

"Oh, I am not sure if you can have any caps on the plane" She looks over at the men running the x-ray machine and says, "Well, if they didn't notice them then I guess it must be okay" She must have thought about that for a moment because then she said, " well wait a minute" and began to type away on her computer. "Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm" is all she is saying. She keeps looking up from her keyboard and reassuring me, "Give me just a minute". I am thinking, "Oh, okay, she only needs a minute to figure out if our caps are going to crash the plane" Now it is my turn, "hmmmmmm".

She looks up, sticks her pointing finger up in the air and says, "give me just a minute" and walks away to see, I guess, I don't know, the wizard behind the green curtain? She comes back a few minutes later, and says, "Just one more minute". Now I am not exaggerating when I say that this took about 10 minutes, just to find out it the caps are going to cause a flying catastrophe. In the mean time, while waiting for the news, I turn to child #4 and say, "which bag has the caps in it?" He says, "one of the bags that has already gone down the conveyor" AHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Now if you are anything like me you are asking yourself why on earth the woman waited until after three bags had been sent before asking me these obviously important questions.

So finally emerging she announces that she has just one more place to ask- the x-ray men. She walks over and says something quietly and they respond, almost yelling, "OH NO, NO CAPS ALLOWED ON THE PLANE. NO WAY, UN UNH, NO CAN DO, ETC. ETC. ETC" You get the picture. "Okay, which bag has the caps in it?" she says smiling. Child #4 and I exchange dreadful glances, "one of the bags that already got sent to wherever bags go". In my infinite wisdom I put colored ribbon on all of our bags, so it made the bags easy to describe. She calls to the keeper of the bags and has our three bags sent back. Children #1 and 4 now go all the way to baggage claim, bring all three bags back, remove the offensive caps and put all three bags back on to the conveyor and now we can move on to the rest of the bags. Here is about where my husband showed up. Let's hear it for showing up to the airport a couple of hours early.

Okay, so you will still have to tune in next time to find out what happens to the rice milk!

Pt 1 Arizona- our vacation! or maybe Rice Milk Will Not Crash a Plane

I always keep a journal when we are on vacation. It is funny the things you forget.......... and remember. I love to read my vacation journals. What is really funny is the way I will retell a story months and years later compared to the way it actually happened. I have a way of taking a half hour to tell the story of something that only took ten minutes to actually happen. Here is an example.

While in Arizona we went up to Jerome. A really neat town that everyone who goes to Arizona should see. It once was a mining town that was dubbed "America's Sinnningest City" or something like that. The two main industries were mining and prostituting. And it seems that the only form of entertainment was drinking, gambling, and well, hanging with prostitutes. While it is no longer a mining town, or a hotbed for red light bulb salesmen it has a pretty neat history and they have manged to use their infamous history as a marketing ploy- that worked- on us anyway.
While we were in Jerome we got two of my boys cap guns. The kind that look like little guns. They got caps of course too. Well the younger son managed to use all of his caps before we headed home from our vacation. So when it came time to pack the bags, I told both boys to be sure to pack their guns in their regular suitcases, NOT the carry on.

Fast forward to the airport. The Phoenix airport. The same Phoenix airport that was recently cited for allowing airport and airline personnel access to restricted areas without proper searches. The same one that tragically a woman, Carol Anne Gotbaum, mother of three young children, died at while in police custody.

Anyway, my husband dropped us off at the airport and proceeded to the car rental place, I could share a long story about the car rental place, but that will turn this half hour story into three quarters of an hour. So, here I am at the airport with six kids, a LARGE car seat for the baby, the stroller, eight bags to check, eight bags to carry on including (but not limited to[I love saying that]) an extra large bottom of the line commercial video camera in a water proof case that looks like it must be carrying arms.

We needed two carts to carry all our stuff into the airport. One cart is carrying our carry on baggage, the other is carrying our check in baggage. I am pushing one and oldest boy is pushing the other one.

Tune in next time to find out what happened to the rice milk.