The airport in Boston is one of my favorites. Everyone that works there is incredibly polite, and they have somehow managed to make the security very thorough and yet very quick. The b.h. and I each had a large-ish suitcase and a smaller personal bag. I made my way through the security line, shoes removed and arms raised like the stick figure in the instructional drawing as I walked through the x-ray machine, and I noticed that my bag was lagging behind. The guy doing the screening called another guy over, and they both pointed and squinted at the screen for a minute before the second guy pulled my back and looked around to see who it belonged to.
"That's me!" I said loudly, raising one hand while I used the other to retrieve my shoes and jacket.
"You know you're not allowed to have any liquids or gels over four ounces, right?" (He actually said this with fewer consonants, because he had that charming Massachusetts accent I have grown to love.)
"Um, yeah... I know the drill," I said very politely crinkling my brow in a gesture of "I can't imagine what the problem might be."
"Do you have anything in here over four ounces?"
"I don't think so..." I trailed off, wondering what the hell could possibly be the issue. I make a point of emptying my bag before every trip and then re-packing it, since I have been known on occasion to carry around a wine key or bottle opener or some such potential deadly weapon for opening drinks.
I remembered that I had packed two kinds of cheese and a small piece of date and walnut cake for my mom just as he discovered them in a large ziplock bag.
"Ahhh, assorted cheeses. I bet this is it."
"Well, I'm from Vermont, you know, gotta bring the family some cheese." I was worried that they would be taken away, or that I would be forced to eat them just to prove that weren't explosive.
He laughed and took my bag back to the screener, holding the cheese in his hand while he ran the bag through, and then returned with both.
"Yep, it was the assoahted cheeses." (That's how he said it- "assoahted")
Smiling, he handed them back to me and wished me a good trip.
The trip was actually pretty good, at least while we were in the air. I slept most of the way, waking up only momentarily when I realized that I missed the beverage service. And then there was the descent.
Remember when I talked about the wind in the forecast? Yeah- that wind. That wind sucked. I knew we were in trouble when I saw how quickly the clouds were racing over the lake, and even more so when I looked down and saw the the lake looked to be strewn with debris, which turned out to be whitecaps. This was while we were flying directly into the wind, which was actually not that big a deal (Easy for me to say, I suppose, not being the pilot). But as soon as we turned toward the airport, all bets were off. We had so much turbulence that the flight attendants took their seats. The plane shook and shuddered, at one point dropping very quickly down and to the right, to the point that I actually felt my lap belt for a full ten seconds or so. I looked over at the b.h., who was completely white, going on green. The plane jerked again, and this time my whole arm came up off of the armrest. Everything had gone quiet. No one seemed even to be breathing, and then I started laughing out loud. I think it was just a reaction to panic- I don't know. I guess I just sort of figured, you know- Fuck it. Like, we're either going to die or not, and I might as well enjoy myself in the meantime.
We didn't die, of course. The touch down was even rougher than the flight, and once on the ground it really didn't seem like we were going to be able to stop, but we did. As we exited the plane, the door to the cockpit was closed. I was sorry at first, because I would like to have thanked the pilot and told him Good Job or something, but I figured he was probably trying to figure out if he had a spare pair of pants.