Rats In The Maze

Well, I thought I was exhausted before, but now I REALLY am. As Michael Chapman says, "there is never a dull moment when traveling with you". Maybe not, but it's REALLY not my fault.

Michael, Cristill and I were traveling to Detroit (pictures to follow in future posting). We were prepared as we could be. We got up early, arrived to the airport early, dropped of the rental car early (are you sensing a pattern here)? However nothing prepared us for the drama that was about to ensue.

Our first stop at this rather confusing and large airport was to drop Cristill off at her gate as she was the first to go. Cristill is visually impaired, so she required assistance in going through the process that we will affectionately call the Detroit airport "rats in the maze" experience. We shuffle through the airport, dragging our bags and leading Cristill to the nearest ticket counter. We wait in the appropriate line until we are able to check in our bags. To help you visualize, Michael is in the lead. His job was to get all of our boarding passes. Cristill and I are behind him with all of the luggage. My job was to get our baggage checked in. Michael is doing his thing to check us in on the kiosk when all of a sudden a rather rude, sharp and annoyed voice shouts at Michael that he cut in front of her and that he was in the wrong line. That "THIS is the line to check baggage and YOU need to be in the line to get boarding passes." *Mind you, we had been standing there for the last 15 minutes or so.*

Michael looks at the lady, says "Oh, I'm sorry" and starts to back away. I said, "He IS trying to get boarding passes". As Cristill's boarding pass is spitting out of the machine, the lady pushes Michael (with her body rather aggressively edging her way in front of the machine) so that SHE can get to the machine. She then loudly complains with her party about Michael, Cristill and I, as Michael and I are frantically trying to get Cristill's baggage, boarding pass and an attendant to assist her through the security checkpoint so that she can get to her flight on time. (Our flight was the other side of the terminal - which you would need to take a monorail-like system to get to...remember...we are early, but now we fear we won't make it to our own flight).

The lady continues to push her way through and is SO vocal, Michael starts backing up. At this point, the rather nice desk agent snaps back at the rude family "Just let this gentleman finish what he is doing". However, when the desk agent's back is turned, the lady successfully pushes her way to the machine, and Michael gets his confirmation code from his bag. Desk agent to the rescue!!! She stops the lady and shouts "where is that gentleman!". I said "Right here!!!!!!" while pointing to Michael and pushing my way through the lady to get Cristill's luggage checked in.

Finally, we get everything in order, drop Cristill off for an attendant to assist her and dash off to our security checkpoint. Now, I never knew how high tech Detroit was. In addition to the regular, take your shoes, and removable clothing off restrictions that all airports have, they also had this machine that you walked into (very Star Trek like) and it shot you with puffs of air in an attempt to detect explosive materials on you or your clothes. It felt like when you go to the eye doctor and they ask you to open your eye while they spit puffs of air, but all over your body. Michael went through it fine and proceeded to the metal machine. However, I on the other hand, had the gentleman who was standing in front of the machine blocking my exit as he was complaining about the lack of opportunities he has to train the TSA agents. The machine was yelling at me to "Please exit", I was bracing for more puffs of air and this guys is babbling about training while blocking my way out. I asked him 3 times if he could let me out and he said rudely, "Did it tell you you could exit?". I said yes and then he glared at me and begrudgingly moved aside.

Thankfully, I made it through the metal detector without getting wanded, and now I am sitting on the plane ready to take flight. Hopefully the flight goes better than the pre-flight experience.