Okay to move on

I got to experience my first full-body scan at the airport this morning. It was apparently recently installed because the TSA people had set up a makeshift barrier rope diverting people from the standard metal detector over to the enormous device, bringing to mind both a metal and plastic Stonehenge tryptic and also a movie set-piece that was supposed to be exactly what it was, as if I'd stepped into a film from 1995 that accidentally guessed exactly what a 2010 full-body scanner would look like.

I won't lie; it was a little exciting. A TSA officer directed me to stand on the colored-in shoe prints on the rubber mat between the two glaucous-blue walls and place my hands on my head, forming a diamond shape by touching the tips of my forefingers and thumbs together, with my open palms facing forward. After a few seconds a second officer directed me out of the open-top cave onto another mat with drawn-on shoe prints. Twenty seconds later she said only, "You're okay to move on.". I wondered briefly if she meant from screening, or more generally in my life.

Despite recent TSA statements that the device doesn't reveal the private parts of a traveler being scanned, the machine's display screen and its operator were noticeably absent from public view, unlike the attached monitors of the Xray devices we're all used to. One wonders why this is, but it only enhances the mystery I suppose, adding a sense of omniscience to the observers guarding our airports. Or perhaps the comparison could be made to that most pathetic of detection devices, the polygraph. Maybe in fact the walls of the giant cattle-chute of truth are filled with nothing but air, acting only as a mental deterrent for would-be terrorists and smugglers.

Either way it was fun. I couldn't help but sputter out an über-nerdy, "That was cool," as I was told to move on. The TSA officer grinned almost imperceptibly and said, sotto voce, "Okay then."

Soon I found myself on an MD-88 bound for Atlanta, mercifully placed in an aisle seat albeit thirty rows back. Heavy rain surrounding the greater Fulton County area afforded us a tremendously bumpy flight during our approach as we dropped through the rapidly changing pressure pockets in the rain clouds, sometimes free-falling twenty or thirty feet at a time while the wings were buffeted back and forth in a constantly changing yaw.

Once firmly on the ground I was utterly shocked to discover that my departure gate for the second leg of my trip to Jacksonville was directly across the concourse hallway from my arrival gate. Every time I've flown into Atlanta for a connecting flight I've had to run the length of the concourse at which I arrived, take a tram to another concourse, run the full length again (or if blessed with extra two minutes, ride the people mover) to arrive, panting, just in time for the last call of boarding for my flight out. This time I had 47 minutes in which to walk twenty feet. Gleeful at my incredible luck I smiled - smirked, really - and thus sealed my fate.

We boarded an essentially identical MD-88 and I found myself again in an aisle seat, this time in row 36 and directly across from the aft food galley. I said "essentially identical" because it was indistinguishable from the last plane except for a bizarre smell lazily wafting out from the little vent nozzles: an odd mixture of a Jiffy Lube, July 4th sparklers, and old bread.

And the captain was a very different breed of cat from the Harry Morgan, just the facts ma'am, sort of guy the last skipper had been.

"Uh, ladies and gents, from the flight deck this is Captain Jimmy, and we're just pleased as punch you've joined us today. Uh, look-it, they're tellin' us this here flight is supposed to be 48 minutes in clear skies, but I'm gonna take this ole girl up to about five and one half miles and run her at around 500 miles an hour and see if I can't get us there a lot faster. I'm telling you what; we're gonna just jump on I-75, take her down to I-10 and hang a left, then run her on over to I-95 and on up to Jax airport, just like we were drivin' it. Only fast as all get-out. We just gotta do some paperwork here for a minute then I'll get y'all there in plenty a time for that football game."

My seat mate and I exchanged smiles and the flight attendant standing in the galley shook her head and said, "Jeez. No more caffeine for him."

Then we sat. And sat. The odd smell started to make my head swim a little and I tried to think of the friend I'd soon be seeing and the warm Atlantic beach I'd soon be visiting. My seat mate fiddled with his Blackberry.

And we sat. After about 35 minutes a man in a flight officer's uniform wandered out of the cockpit and sauntered to the back of the plane, paused next to me and looked at the flight attendant. He nodded his head at her and said, "Uh-huh." She frowned.

Five more minutes passed and soon two jump-suited men with reflective vests that read "FAA" in big, gold letters came aboard. They walked halfway back the aisle and opened an overhead compartment filled with equipment instead of carry-on luggage. They stared at it, fiddled with some controls, and frowned at each other before walking up to the cockpit.

Captain Jimmy returned to the p.a. system.

"Uh, folks, you probably noticed we got kinda a funny smell goin' on in the plane and some fellas here are gonna check it out and see if they're gonna let us take this ole girl up or not. Give us a second to figure that one out."

We gave them a second, and in fact another twenty minutes.

"Uh folks, that'd be a negative on gettin' up in the air in this bird and they're tellin' us it'll be about three or four hours to get this plane sorted out. But I did talk to the tower about maybe getting us another bird instead because, man, I want to see that football game."

I have to say what followed was genuinely impressive. Not only did they get us another plane, it happened within an hour and departed from the gate I'd originally come in from, that same twenty feet across the concourse. I guess when you're a major airline with a colossal hub at Hartsfield-Jackson airport, you can swap out MD-88 airplanes like a fresh pair of socks. Once we all re-planed and made the requisite number of Deja vu jokes, I learned from the flight attendant that the smell had been from a burning "engine pack" that probably would have resulted in our deaths had it happened in the air. I considered engaging in a good rage-vomit to help sort out my emotions, until she mentioned that all would be just fine on our "Groundhog Flight," so called because of the repeat of all the same passengers in the same seats on a different plane, referencing the movie Groundhog Day. When I learned it was common enough to have its own in-jokey name, I decided to just chill out and enjoy the blisteringly fast trip as Captain Jimmy throttled that ole girl up to the speed of sound.

I have no doubt he made it to that football game, but I couldn't help but wonder what might show up on that hidden monitor if I was able to take another full-body scan at my destination: something missing, or something that wasn't there before. As long as I'm still okay to move on, it's all good.