You know what they say about cities with small airports....

One more story about 'Tana...

If anyone's done a lot flying, they'd know that it's the small airports out of small cities that have the worst security. Not worst as in totally lapse but worst as in ridiculously absurd. So far, I've never had anything happen to me while going through security in SFO, Oakland, Dulles, Washington, Philly, Baltimore or Newark but have had trouble going through Reno, Billings, and now, Great Falls.

Great Falls is a tiny airport, so tiny that there's no concession stands after security and since you can't actually bring any sort of liquid with you past security, the only way to get something to drink before the flight is to buy something from a vending machine.

The day Harlan and I flew home, there was one flight departing at that time, a flight consisting of 14 people, two of which were yours truly and yours truly's SO. This, of course, meant getting the full force of the Department of Homeland Security Law.

Like most airports, you have to show your ID and boarding pass the moment you get in line. You then have to show it again as you are about to make your way through security. In Great Falls, they still do that despite the fact the two people checking security stand not more than ten feet away from each other. Or that with nobody else in line, there'd be no way I could possibly not be who made it through line unless I somehow managed to change into a cleverly disguised member of Al Queda in the few seconds the security guy yawned.


Then, my backpack was suddenly deemed worthy of extra investigating through the x-ray machine despite the fact there was nothing in there that had pretty much changed since I took off from SFO. Not that they didn't really know that, but I'm not sure what sort of possibly evil contraptions they'd discover in a backup consisting of several books, magazines, and an iPod. But I really have nothing to complain about considering Harlan was brought over to the Security table and had her purse taken apart several times by some gruff fat lady with a bad haircut. She apparently had some issues with the few items Harlan put in her purse but was nice not to berate her for not putting them in a plastic baggie but just put them in a plastic bag. Then to make sure there was nothing else of danger in there, she went through her purse again, something I think might have been caused by the growing look of anger and annoyance emanating from Harlan's face. She looked so pissed off by the whole episode I was pretty sure she would be dragged away and given a full cavity search just to show her who the boss was.

Luckily, the nice angry security lady let Harlan through and then quickly joined the other security folks in what was probably a highly enlightening discussion of the upcoming hunting season.