Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (5 page)

4. We got back on the plane and the pilot announced that—remember, I am not making this up—we were going to fly to Los Angeles to get some
more
fuel. So needless to say …

5. We landed in San Francisco. There they told us (why not?) that we had to change planes, so we all got off, only to be met by a gate attendant wearing
an entire devil costume
, which was seeming less and less amusing. Also the pilot was not inspiring a great deal of confidence in us. You know how pilots are generally trim, military-looking individuals who remain up in the cockpit looking aloof but competent? Well,
our
pilot was a chunky, slightly disheveled man who looked like a minor character in
Police Academy XIII
. He was walking around the lounge area, chatting with us passengers as though he had nothing else to do, and holding a computer printout the thickness of
War and Peace
, which he announced was our “flight plan,” although we couldn’t help but note that (a) he wasn’t reading it, and (b) pages were falling out of it. Some of us were starting to suspect that he wasn’t a real pilot at all, but merely a man who had dressed up in a realistic pilot costume for Halloween. But we were desperate, so we followed him aboard yet another plane. As we taxied out to the runway, the pilot said—I swear—“Hopefully, this one will fly all the way.”

6. So we took off from San Francisco, and for a while everything was fine except for the aroma
coming from the seat behind us, which was occupied by a wretched woman who was attempting to get to Australia with two very small children, whom she evidently intended to enter in the World Pooping Championships. But this ceased to be our main concern when, after about an hour over the Pacific, which is famous for not having anyplace on it where you can land, the pilot announced that we had a “minor engine problem.”

7. So we turned around and headed back toward, you guessed it, San Francisco, which we were beginning to think of as home. All the way back the pilot kept reassuring us about how
minor
this engine problem was, so you can imagine our excitement when we got to the airport and saw what appeared to be the entire San Francisco Fire Department lining the runway.

8. We landed safely and scuttled off the plane to be greeted, once again, by the devil, who was now being assisted by a witch. Of course by this point, Hell seemed like a major improvement over commercial air travel.

9. Several hours later our pilot led us onto yet
another
plane. By this point a lot of people had dropped out of the flight, but we were determined to see what would ultimately happen, with a lot of smart money betting that this would become the first commercial airliner ever to be sucked into a black hole. During the Preflight Safety Lecture—I swear this is true—the flight attendant said, “If you gotta go, go with a smile.”

10. We took off from San Francisco again and
flew back out over the Pacific, where, to judge from the amount of “turbulence,” we flew smack into a whole
herd
of airborne water buffalo. The in-flight movie was
The Dead Poets Society
.

11. We landed in Honolulu, 21 hours after we left Miami. To apologize for our inconvenience, the flight attendants gave us coupons that were good for discounts on future flights, although they knew full well that we were all planning to return to the mainland via canoe.

I do not mean to suggest here that all flights take this long to reach their destinations. Some of them
never
reach their destinations. And I understand that there are even some, the ones that I personally am not on, that arrive right on schedule. You just never know, which is why air travel is the ongoing adventure that it is.

The important thing to remember about airport security procedures is that they have been created for
your protection
. Sure, it can be annoying to have to stop at the security checkpoint when you’re on a tight schedule, but look at it this way: If the security personnel do their job properly, they just might cause you to
miss your plane
, thereby possibly saving your life.

The heart of the airport security system is the
metal detector
, a device that shoots invisible rays into your body. These rays are perfectly
harmless, according to security personnel, although you notice that THEY never go through the metal detector. In fact, when nobody’s around, they use it to cook their lunch. So most travel experts recommend that, to avoid turning your internal organs into baked lasagna, you go through the detector as fast as possible, maybe even back up fifty yards or so and get a running start.

The purpose of the metal detector is to make sure that you’re not carrying a bomb or a deadly weapon or a set of car keys. If the detector detects one of these items, it will beep; security personnel will ask you to place the item on a plastic tray and go through the detector again. Your item will be returned to you on the other side (“Wait, sir! You forgot your bomb!”).

Security personnel are on the lookout for people who fit the Profile of Suspected Terrorists, which is as follows:

As a smart traveler who wishes to avoid the inconvenience of being taken to a small airless interrogation room and having electrical wiring attached to your various genitals, you should make every effort to avoid fitting this profile. This means that if you are, for example, a male, you should try to deflect the security personnel’s attention away from this fact via such techniques as:

• Wearing a dress.
  ²
  

• Periodically remarking out loud to nobody in particular: “I certainly have a lot of body hair, for a woman!”
  

At the security checkpoint, your carry-on baggage must be placed on a conveyor belt and passed through an X-ray machine so the security personnel can see if you are carrying questionable items, because if you are, federal law requires them to open up your luggage and root around among your personal belongings like starving boars in a full Dumpster. If they find anything suspicious, For Your Own Protection they will ask you certain standard security questions, such as:

• “What’s this stain in your underwear? Cheez Whiz?”
  

• “This is a
  vibrator?
  I never
  seen
  a vibrator this big! HEY, NORM! TAKE A LOOK AT THIS LADY’S VIBRATOR!”
  

Airport security personnel are chosen for their sense of humor, and there is nothing they enjoy so much as a good joke. A fun game you kids can play with them is “Uncle Ted.” What you do is, when you get near the security checkpoint, you walk up to a passenger selected at random and say in a loud voice, “Uncle Ted, can I see the bomb again?” Ha ha! Those wacky, fun-loving security personnel will sure come running! They might even take “Uncle Ted” for a ride in the electric cart! They might even take YOU for a ride in the electric cart if you mention the detonator in Mom’s purse!

AN OPEN LETTER TO AIRLINE PASSENGERS
Dear Airline Passenger:

We will be starting this rebuttal in just a few moments.

Please remain in the area, as we are almost ready to start this point-by-point rebuttal. Thank you.

We apologize for the delay. We will begin rebutting very soon now, and we are grateful for your patience.

We have an announcement for those readers who are waiting for the point-by-point rebuttal. We are experiencing a minor equipment problem with our word processor at this time, but we do expect to have an announcement very soon and we do ask for your continued patience. In the meantime, we regret to announce that we have overbooked this rebuttal, and we are asking for readers who are willing to give up their space in exchange for an opportunity to read
two
future rebuttals on a topic of your choice. Thank you, and we expect to have another announcement shortly.

Okay, we do apologize for any inconvenience, but we have been informed that the word-processor problems have been corrected and we will begin rebutting any moment now. We ask that those of you with small shrieking children
pLeAse asssidaisaas *(*^*&^^ hey can someBoDy fiX thiS goddaM

REBUTTAL CANCELED SEE AGENT

Sincerely,

M. Duane LaGrout
President

Traveling as a Family

F
amily travel has been an American tradition ever since the days when hardy pioneer families crossed the Great Plains in oxen-drawn covered wagons, braving harsh weather, hostile Native Americans, unforgiving terrain, scarce food, and—worst of all—the constant whining coming from the backseat:

“Are we there yet?”

“Hey! THESE plains aren’t so great!”

“Mom, Ezra is making hostile gestures at those Native Americans!”

“Are we almost there?”

“Mom! Rebecca dumped some unforgiving terrain into my scarce food!”

“PLEASE can we stop here and settle Kansas please please PLEASE??”

“Yuck! We’re eating
bison
again?”

“When are we going to be there?”

“Mom! Little Ben put oxen poop in his hair!”

Yes, it was brutally hard, but those brave
pioneers kept going, day after day, month after month, never stopping, and do you know why? Because
Dad was driving
, that’s why. When Dad is driving, he never stops for
anything
. This is part of the Guy Code of Conduct. A lot of those early pioneer dads, when they got to California, drove their wagons directly into the Pacific Ocean and would probably have continued to Japan if it hadn’t been for shark damage to the oxen.

Another part of the Guy Code of Conduct still in effect is that only Dad can drive. If necessary, Dad will permanently bond his hands to the steering wheel with Krazy Glue to prevent Mom from driving, because he knows that if she had the wheel, she might suffer a lapse of judgment and decide to actually
stop
for something, such as food or sleep or medical care for little Jennifer, whose appendix has apparently burst. No, Dad will not allow minor distractions such as these to interfere with his vacation schedule, which looks like this:

What Dad means by “see,” of course, is “drive past at 67 miles per hour.” Dad feels it is a foolish waste of valuable vacation time to get out of the car and actually go
look
at an attraction such as the White House, Niagara Falls, the Louvre, etc.

I myself have been guilty of this behavior. Once we were driving across the country and we got to South Dakota, a dirt-intensive state so sparsely populated that merely by entering it you automatically become a member of the legislature. A major tourist attraction in South Dakota is something called “Wall Drug,” which is basically a group of stores advertised by a string of billboards that begins somewhere outside of the solar system. My wife, Beth, wanted to stop. Her reasoning was that we had driven hundreds of miles that day with absolutely no activity to relieve our boredom except eating Stuckey’s miniature pecan pies at the rate of approximately three pies per person per hour. And so as we drew closer to Wall Drug, passing billboard after billboard—157 miles to go, 153 miles to go, 146 miles to go, etc.—her anticipation mounted, until finally we were there, and Beth’s excitement reached a fever pitch because this was the only point of interest for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles, and of course I elected to
whiz right past it
, as though I had an important appointment elsewhere in South Dakota to pick up an urgent load of manure.