Scanners and snow tires

Snow pushes our flight to LA back by half an hour. Bullrider@sympatico.ca (that's her email address, but please don't spam her, she's a gem!) checks us in to our Air Canada flight and then kindly offers to hold our bags at her counter while we get coffees and snacks and do a proper no-rushed-goodbye to Elaine and Dale, our gracious airport chauffeurs. You must carry your own bags through customs when you go into the states and we'd rather not be dragging them around the airport with us. Thanks to Bullrider, we don't have to. Already, people are being nice to us, helping us out. We take this as a good omen for the next few months.


Passing through the very narrow and very guarded opening into the US customs and saying our last goodbyes means we are officially underway - now it's just the two of us. This brings some tears of sadness and happiness for both of us. The customs officer asks Jenn for her passport which gets her crying even more. He's not phased though. Apparently, he sees this all the time.



Because Jenn is so teary, airport security thinks she is trying to hide something and directs her to a special line. Or maybe its because they're trying to prove they don't racially profile so they pick out the whitey red head with the tiny nose piercing. But, it was actually already on her boarding pass, the dreaded 4-S, which means she gets shunted towards the body scanner. They ask if I want to go with her and not realizing what's going on, I say sure. Why not?

The security lady explains to Jenn that she has been designated as one of the highly dangerous 4-S types and she can choose to have the body scan or be gate raped. Jenn chooses the scan, mostly out of interest I think. She is disappointed to miss her chance to make arousal noises while the security lady pats her up and down and then some. Security lady thinks Jenn is teary because she's being body scanned, but Jenn tells her it's because she just said goodbye to her mom.

The security folk are actually very kind, almost apologetic. Clearly, they hate this part of the job. They are more interested in the weather outside and whether it had stopped snowing because they don't have snow tires for the drive home.

Jenn steps towards the body scan machine which looks like one of those teleporting pods in David Cronenberg's The Fly. While I'm chatting to the security team about the process for de-icing planes, I watch Jenn enter the teleportation pod with her hands in the air, half expecting a flash of blinding light and then for her to disappear only to turn up on a beach in Fiji several hours before I'll ever get there. She's asked to rotate as she's slow cooked. Apparently, she's clean. No explosives. Although they did miss the gun stashed behind...




I step towards the scanner for my turn.

"Oh no sir, you do not have to go through," says the security officer. "Only she is 4-S."

Mildly disappointed, I step around the pod and join Jenn as we collect all our coins and other metals

"It's because you look shifty," I say.

Apparently "The Shift" has begun.