Travel: Don't Dress Like a Clown

I must be getting a little bunchy...I am beginning to think about travel even though I have no plans to go anywhere for months. I am having too much fun here at home. Yet, in the night, I wake up thinking about our adventures.

I talk with my family and friends about travel quite a bit. My husband tells me they don't care but I don't care whether they care or not. I like to talk about it so I do. The story that came to my mind last night was the one about us traveling home from Spain just after the war on Iraq had started. The security was very high, the Spanish people were furious with the American president so we had to pass ourselves off as Canadian.

We had witnessed the Palm Sunday procession that morning, lay on the beach in the afternoon and changed quickly before we headed to the airport. I was dressed in my 501's with a light linen jacket, a big straw hat I had worn on the beach, sensible shoes and I carried my beach bag with my swimming suit inside.

2003 In Toledo Train Station...what was that
book I was reading?

I didn't really think much about how cranky the Spanish ticket people at the airport were because, in my experience, the Spanish men can be a little cranky on a very good day. The flight went as expected. Nothing unusual happened until we arrived in Vancouver and got ready to re board the plane for Portland.

It was very cold in Canada and we had a 3 hour layover. When I began to shiver I found a

2000 at the Generalife in the Alhambra,
Granada, Spain

newsstand inside the area where we were allowed to wait and bought a big Vancouver sweatshirt to put on over my jacket. Now I was dressed in my 501 jeans, wore a big straw hat, a Vancouver sweatshirt over a long linen jacket, sensible shoes and was carrying a beach bag.

I just pushed the security people over the edge! My husband zoomed through, found a seat on the aisle and waited as I was searched, required to take off my sensible shoes as well as my big straw hat and patted down by a woman. They also looked inside my beach bag. I don't know what the criteria was in 2003 but I am thinking that dressing like a clown with a beach bag did not work for airport security then.

I didn't giggle until I was safely seated and then hysteria shook my body. It was a tense time in the world...thankfully we kept our sense of humor. We had known that, after 9/11, our travel life would never be the same.

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