After a very relaxing three weeks at home (thanks again, Mom and Dad!) I headed to Fresno yesterday morning to fly back, at last, to my beloved New York. My flight was scheduled to leave at 6:55 A.M. For those of you lucky enough not to know this, Fresno's wait times are highly variable. Although it's a small airport, the volume of people who fly out on early flights is often more than the security forces can efficiently handle, resulting in very long lines. (At other times, the place is a ghost town, but I've never been able to find a pattern.) This fact, combined with the eager young go-getter who tried to blow up the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam, worried my mother. She insisted that I allow about an hour and a half to get through security instead of the usual hour, and I reluctantly agreed it was probably best.
Bleary-eyed, we left Visalia at 4:30 the next morning and arrived at the Fresno airport at about 5:20. The parking lot looked full indeed, but I discovered when I went in to drop off my bag that the check in line wasn't long at all. It looked long at first, but the back-up turned out to be the fault of the Fresno State men's basketball team, whose members are enormous and therefore take up lots of room. From there, I headed to the security line. There were about ten people in it, and as my mom and I watched, the number dwindled until it was totally empty. Hmmm.
Mom and I spent the extra time chatting in Fresno's pleasant waiting area, which has been redone to look like a redwood forest. When there were about five minutes left before boarding, we said our goodbyes and I headed straight to the first checkpoint without passing Go or collecting $200 (pity). There were three security guards hanging around the podium where my driver's license was compared to my boarding pass. Check. Next, I got in the "line" to have my bag x-rayed, where I was forced to wait behind four people. Although the metal detector did not beep as I walked through, I was still directed to step to the side for a pat down of my sweater which was, apparently, suspiciously bulky. Thirty seconds later, I was pulling on my boots and preparing to head to the gate. Check. It occurred to me as I collected everything that there seemed to be a lot of security personnel buzzing around the area. I did a quick headcount: ten guards to seven passengers.
I boarded my on-time flight to Laguardia via Dallas, feeling no more secure than usual, but optimistic that at least this new security risk my help us chip away at unemployment rates.
No comments:
Post a Comment