Traveller's Rant

I forgot to call the open-mouth show on CKNW and whine about this one:

About 6 mos ago, I came thru Vancouver Int to PG. The plane was delayed for hours w a mechanical problem so I checked in my bag so I didn’t have to haul it around for 3 hours. When I got home I found the SOMEONE had opened the bag, dug out my camera, removed the camera from the camerabag and put it back in the flight bag. Dicks.
I called in, filed a police report and ended up with flight credits for the camera AND for the delay! Bonus, right?
Well I had to use some of those credits up last month and flew down to the coast. When I flew back, I was late getting to the airport because of all the construction delays, and rushed to security.
A> It was a 5:45 flight, dinnertime. So they’d shut down ALL the security checkthrus except one. With a huge lineup.
B> Not ONE fucking security person spoke English as a fist language. Nor French. I had TWO laptops to check thru, so one goes in a plastic container, then the bag in another, then the other laptop, then the other laptop bag, then one for all the contents of my pockets. The woman nattered at me the whole time in some kind of pidgin english.
C> My belt set off the guys wand. It didn’t in PG coming down, but I had to go by the hand gestures as the 80 yr old guy muttered in some obscure dialect.
D> Then the first four trays came out and everything stopped while one of the women held up a coat and shouted ‘who belong this’ until she found the owner. Some lady’s tray came down the line. Then another lady’s. Then mine. Out of order to the way they came in. I grabbed my stuff and ran towards the gate
E> I made a comment to another lady about the BS security and she answered “better safe than sorry” as we ran. Goddam Yankee response. Excuse me but I don’t feel particularly safe being checked by 80yr old new immigrants making minimum wage for some SCAB security oufit. That’s complete bullshit for security.
F> So I land in PG and wheel up to the A&Rubberchew because I haven’t eaten. One of the items I had to toss in the tray was my magnetic moneyclip. It had about $50 in 5s and a $20 on the outside. When I pulled it out there were only 6 5s and no 20!!!
They made up that mixup with the trays at the airport to STEAL my money!!! If it happened to me, it happens to other people too!

TWICE THRU VANCOUVER AIRPORT AND TWICE RIPPED OFF BY THIEVES EMPLOYED THERE!!!

btw As he drove me to the airport the brother-in-law told me of an airport carpark being investigated. I guess someone called CKNW because they came back from a 2 week vacation, there were dents in the car, it was dirty, the ashtray was full and they didn’t smoke.
The call resulted in dozens of others calling in with similar tales of the same outfit. One guy logged his business use, and there were 425 extra kms on the odometer from when he parked it. Everyone said their tanks were empty when they picked up their cars.

The terrorists have already won.

Heh… I have a story as well…

About 3 months ago I was traveling thru VAN INT on my way to meetings and, as always, I had to wait several hours (felt like days) for connections to other parts of our lovely province. I have a tendency to walk around the airport while waiting. As I was walking up to a section at the far end of international departures I noticed there was a burly (although quite height challenged) security guy. There were no signs, barriers, or otherwise preventing or warning me from entering the area. As I got closer I realized that the burly, uniformed hombre standing behind a podium was an American Homeland Security official, who appeared to have an official Homeland Security .ppt ready to roll behind him. He called me over as I approached to about 20 feet away (7 metres for you metrics) and asked what I was doing. I replied that I was wandering around while waiting for a flight. To which he replied, and I quote, “We need you to be over there”, pointing in the direction from where I came. I replied that that would be no problem, but as you can imagine I was screaming inside; I was wanting to say a whole bunch of other things, such as:
“Who are the ‘we’ that wants me over there? I want to be here”
(there were only the two of us),
“We would like YOU to be over there.” (me… pointing far to the south past the border into the U.S.; probably echoing the feeling of most Canadians if they were to know we have Americans here taking space in our airports and calling it their own space),
“I don’t see any signs saying that I am anywhere I shouldn’t be, so ‘we’ will go where ‘we’ damn well want.”

Of course I didn’t respond with any of these as ‘we’ did not want to miss ‘our’ flight because ‘we’ were on the business end of a digital colonoscopy by several burly members of the Homeland Security team.