A Pom et la pomme

[Written on Tuesday, but posted early Saturday morning at PDX, to which I give three hearty cheers for free wireless Internet access.]

I know this isn’t exactly what’s meant by moblogging, but all the same I feel pretty mobile. I’m writing this at an altitude of many thousands of feet somewhere above the west coast, heading north to Portland. Thankfully so far it’s a smooth flight, otherwise I’d be way cranky.

Though actually I’ve only just calmed down after being very very cranky indeed. Been a long, busy day, full of errands, meetings (okay, just the one meeting, but it was a full one), and then a mad dash through rush hour LA traffic to the airport. By the time I got to the electronic check-in machine, there was about an hour to go before the flight time. But it seemed cool. About half a dozen machines were open, so I got my boarding pass and such quickly.

And then waited. Six open machines apparently translates to two harried staff handling the checked luggage, and in this case they were more than harried. Everyone ahead of me in the line to check baggage seemed to have their own arcane problem, and the check-in staff had the furiously panicked look of those who work on the front line of customer relations with technology that they barely understand. (Here’s a suggestion, which airlines can have for free — no need to credit me with it or anything. They should wire up additional monitors facing the passengers checking in, so that they can see what the endless tap-tap-tapping away is for. Never mind that they probably won’t understand it. Seeing it might at least give them a reason to feel empathy when things seem to be taking forever. Flying is a process of self-imposed complete powerlessness for a few hours, and anything that could be done to give back some power — or at least the semblance of power, or at least at least an awareness that the staff often feel powerless too — would be sterling PR. We could all share in the byzantine software they get to use, and laugh convivially as our planes take off without us.)

So there I was, standing as knowledge-free and powerless as I used to be as a kid when I wanted to peer over the high wooden counter at the local fish and chip shop, but was just too little. I’ve a reasonably placid soul, but eventually I started doing the smoke-out-of-ears thing, charged to the front and asked if I could check my bag, since it had been forever (at least) since the machine had checked me in. The harried lady took a look at my documents and asked, in what seemed to me to be an unreasonably suspicious tone, why I was checking my bag so late. For a moment I think I channelled Bill Bryson. I explained how long I’d been waiting. She went through a long spiel concerning ‘what she would do for me’, pathetic supplicant that I was. What she would do for me apparently consisted of the choice between not checking my bag after all, and checking it late, but signing something to the effect that if the bag didn’t make the same flight that I did, I understood that they wouldn’t deliver it for me. Perhaps she’d mistakenly thought that my name was Hobson.

I do a good annoyed customer if I’m pushed far enough on a bad day, and I did one then. I stomped off loudly toward the security check, knowing full well that there was Something in my unchecked bag which might well Cause A Problem. Also the stomping had something to with the fact that I had about twenty minutes before the plane was due to leave. It was fast stomping.

Backpack went through security. Mac went through. Unchecked bag went through. I went through. And then the unchecked bag was being held up so that it could be claimed. I claimed it, knowing what was coming. ‘Is there anything in this bag that’s long and sharp?’ asked the, in the circumstances, rather nice security man. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘an apple peeler’.

He dug around, pulled the thing out, took its complex bits from its box. I was as baffled as he was. It’s essentially a small hand-cranked lathe for paring, slicing and coring apples. Lots of spikey metal bits. I told him that, since I’d meant to check the bag, but had been comprehensively thwarted, I would completely understand if the apple peeler couldn’t make it. It didn’t seem much to jettison if it meant the balloon could stay in the air. But no, he took the thing to show to all of his colleagues, brought it back, packed it away in its box, and the box in my bag, and waved me through, pausing to thank me for showing the apple peeler to them. Apparently none of them had seen one before, so it was useful for them to know what one looked like — for next time, you understand.

Of course they’d not seen one before, thought me. Anyone in their right mind would put an apple peeler in checked baggage.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, it’s for making apple pies for Thanksgiving. But now it’s OFFICIAL: mechanical apple peelers are OKAY in unchecked baggage in the continental United States. I feel like such a pioneer.