So I am back home after a strange flight to Seattle.  Sacramento Intl Airport proved to be frustrating, courteous and professional all at the same time.

I went to check in after lunch with a friend (a great lunch and a great friend I might add) And arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare.  I checked in my carry on and discovered I had a no no in my bag, and had to go back out and have it rechecked.

At their TSA screening I was kind of frustrated.  The guy in line checked my boarding pass, and 3 feet away someone else wanted to see it as I went through the detector.  Stupid really.  They were almost within arms distance of each, with another agent overseeing both, yet there was the redundancy.  I had put mine in my laptop bag, so it had to be brought back to me.

The second time through, after checking my suitcase, they ran my lap top bag through twice - Too many things electrical.  No surprise, I had:

• MP3 player, ear buds and charger
• Digital camera and battery charger
• Laptop, wireless mouse and AC charger
• Power inverter
• 2 cell phone car chargers
• 2  cell phone AC chargers
• GPS receiver
• CDs and DVDs
• Cell phone and Bluetooth headset
• Fingerprint scanner
• Smart Card reader
• Various multimedia connectors

Good thing I was traveling lite.

In retrospect I would rather they be overly cautious then slack, but still…the whole 3 oz liquids in a zip lock baggy does seem kinda goofy.

Once through, I discovered that Terminal B at Sacramento has almost nothing past the screening, not even a Starbucks.   I could have gotten one earlier, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring it through the screening.  Sigh. 

The pub they did have served a good Caesar salad though.   I also eventually picked up some Ibuprofen from a sparse newsstand style travelers concession as well as some salted soy nuts.  No I am not a health freak, I was just burned out on chips and trail mix.

Walked the 45 steps to the gate and….the flight is delayed. 

Sacramento has free WIFI, but I was too tired to do more then a quick email check.  Why is it that more airports don’t have free wireless though….

Here I also discovered something annoying: Idiots on Cell phones.  I got to listen to some yahoo whine about being late for a half hour.  He even noted that the plane (when it arrived) was the same one he had flown in on and it was late then too,  He made some smarmy joke about the cockpit windshield rain repellent system, as that was what broke earlier.  Dude, that is actually a good thing to have working, as we found out when we landed at Sea Tac - in the rain.

The Cell Phone thing…interestingly as I boarded the plane, idiot was sitting in 1st class still whining about being late.  Half of 1st class was on the phone too.  Mine was turned off and in my bag, as I know the rules.  One guy sitting behind me had to be told 5 times to turn his off, and actually delayed the plane even more.

I love the irony, as one guy uses his to whine about being late and another uses his to make us even more late.

But even more importantly is the fact that some people have no discretion about what they talk about, or how loud they are.

Give it some thought folks.

The rest of the trip was quiet, and uneventful, including the baby in the seat behind me.

Overall, the weekend trip was a huge win for me as I was able to see family and friends and feel pretty good.

But coming home is nice too - or it was till I lost my cell phone in a rainy parking lot.  I found it a little while later, and magically no one ran over it. Hope it still works tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will be revamping my site slightly, and posting some reflections on blogging as I approach a major milestone:  100,000 hits.  But that is tomorrow.

Final observation for tonight:  Make time for friends and family.  You need it.  They need it.  We need each other.  Life throws some crazy stuff at you, and friends and family are what God gives us to help deal with it.

Thank you to all my friends who made time to see me, and apologies to those who I missed.  May I ever be aware of how fortunate I am to have the friends I do.

And even more important, my love to my family in California:  my sister, the amazing business woman who juggles a professional writing career, two jobs and the full time care of my mother who is dealing with cancer; her husband who never wavers in his love and support, and my mom who has outlived the doctors initial projections by many years and continues to kick the living hell out of her cancer.  I can only pray to have a fraction of her strength should I ever have to deal with a terminal illness as she does.

To you, my readers, who share my travels and my life journey in this blog, thank you for letting me cross the line a bit and be personal.  I hope you have gotten something positive out of it, and out of my writing in general.  I am honored by your comments and I hope I can continue to offer you something original and useful to read.

Peace.

Karl

(LSU)