Pontificate!
First La Guardia and now Dulles, Doc? Are you trying to sample the delights of every TSA butt-groper in our great nation? Cheaper just to hire a scary dominatrix to stub ciggies out on your balls, surely?
Word to the wise - avoid all airports named after dead bureaucrats and politicians. They are inevitably sink-holes of depravity and despair. My local rejoices in having no name other than it's three-letter code (RDU), and security there is a breeze by comparison...
My favorite is when they ask you if anyone has put anything in to your bags without your knowledge. How's that again?
Question:'Do you wish or have any intention of overthrowing the government?'
Answer: 'Sole purpose of visit.'
The above scenario can get you in trouble too.
They get pissed if you bring your own peanuts on board, too.
I guess its like bringing your own liquor to a pub.
Likewise, they don't want you to bring your own vomit aboard.
Glad you're back safe and sorta sound. Sorry to hear about your afflictions in the air. Some poor mid-Atlantic whale, out enjoying a bit of a swim and minding his own business, is going to get a hell of a shock when your particular chunk of green ice plummets from the sky and hits him on the bonce.
Whenever I think of US Customs and Immigration the agitation that results causes me to try and pull my fingernails off absent-mindedly and garotte myself with many joined pipecleaners. So I won't go into my numerous bad experiences with them.
Suffice to say the US passport stamp is the crappiest-looking in the whole world (even Red China can do better) and we should take all the clues from that to be indicative of the crappiness of the process and the miserableness of the processors.
Neither you nor I have the time to go through the official incompetencies that have marked my many entries into the US. I wouldn't mind, nearly as much, I really wouldn't, if they weren't all such surly, rude sods. I mean, is that part of the job? To be desperately unpleasant and incompetent at all times?
Re: The questions. I answered no on the "food products" question once, only to have the bags opened to find the Official German Mother-In-Law had loaded me up with cookies, wurst, and a bottle of undeclared schnapps.
I had some 'splainin' to do.
Cheers.
Party in your honour over at Dr Maroon's Cape to Rio.
Ivan, I was going to dig up the old mouldy "Dull, Duller, Dulles" quote, but it would just go over the heads of tadays yoof. I could weep.
I usually answer "No, but I put something in that feller's bag" if I don't want to go on the trip. Works a treat.
I like handing out peanuts on the plane, then gasping and proclaiming that I'm deathly allergic. I actaully got a flight attendant to move when I feigned anaphalactic shock. I'm so funny!
Do share Sammi! I'm running out of ideas here!
Sherman, German mum-in-laws are pure evil. If she's anything like mine, she knew what she was doing.
Thanks Doc! I'll be right over. Naught but work to do today anyway and I'd hate to be stuck here.
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