Recent Travels

Our most recent trips were to Tucson for Seline and Dylan's wedding, and I went to DC to buy an application form for a new passport. The latter is a long story...

On the topic of Tucson, we missed our original departure from Boston to [Dallas Fort Worth] Tucson due to the never-ending delights of the TSA. There must have been at least three hundred people in the security line: even the airline staff were wondering out loud what the heck was happening. People ahead of us whose flights were due to depart after ours were allowed to skip the line, but we were told to keep standing in the queue... and eventually raced to our gate to see that the jetway had just been pulled back from the plane. The people who'd been allowed to cut the line (whose flight was due to leave ten minutes after ours) ended up with a delayed flight, so they had to wait airside too. Fortunately the staff of American were helpful, and Peter's BA status got us into the Admirals club lounge, where a star by the name of Maureen re-routed us through Chicago. We arrived only a couple of hours later than originally planned: good thing we were booked on one of the early flights [though if we had been flying later perhaps the TSA would have been more manageable?]

As for DC, the passport tale isn't done yet so rather than jinxing myself I'll wait to tell the story until I am able to travel internationally again. The upside was that I saw one of my business school classmates, Faheen (and her eight month old son Zain), and after all the embassy hoo-ha had a beautiful autumn afternoon of wandering around DC to see the White House [tourists + protestors] and war memorials [more tourists + a massive school group]. I have posted some photos and will post more over the coming days.

Oh, and there was *no* line at the TSA in DC, though I had hours of time to spare before my flight. The TSA staff manning the checkpoint I went through told me they'd been on duty for almost an hour and I was the first person they'd dealt with that day [they were a few checkpoints down from the end of the line]. Perhaps Dulles could send some of their extra TSA staff and scanners to Logan?