Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The Rush Hours

by Pa Rock
Traveling Fool

The trip to Oregon is now consigned to the family history books, and I am safely back at my little house on Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona.  I am already busy packing more boxes in anticipation of my move back to the Ozarks at the end of next month.

Today I had the unenviable chore of participating in rush hour traffic binges in two large cities.  I got into Portland this morning just in time to join the thousands of Portlandians who were trying to get to work, and I left the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this evening just as everyone was trying to get out of Phoenix and go home.  Fortunately for me, there were no fender-benders and traffic ran fairly smoothly - but there was just so damned much of it!

The Portland Airport has a feature that I wish more major airports would adopt.  It has electrical outlets everywhere!    I have been in some airports where the distance between outlets was measured in miles, but not Portland.  In this day and age when everyone is connected to some electronic gizmo, it is very satisfying to know that power is available in abundance.

Security was interesting at the Portland Airport.  I knew the plane was only going to be two-thirds full, so I decided not to check my little suitcase and save the twenty-five dollars.  Sadly, it has been so long since I lugged my suitcase onto a plane that I had forgotten one of the main rules.  As I stepped up to the X-ray machines preparing to shove my stuff through, a haggard TSA official asked if I had any toiletries in the suitcase.  "Yes, I do," I told her.  "Several."  She looked at me like she was having the worst day ever - and then sent it through.  I also sent a banana through in my jacket pocket, and forgot to take my belt off.  Behavior like that at Sky Harbor would have resulted in a scene - and probably a body-cavity search!

There was a hard frost on the car when I left my hotel room this morning, and when our plane touched down in Phoenix is was a pleasant seventy-nine degrees Fahrenheit.  I will certainly miss Phoenix's two or three months of pleasant weather!

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