12.28.2008

Your Airport Sucks, Frenchie. Also: I Am a Master Criminal

I am back in the United States. I am really, really happy about that. Let me tell you about my travels over about 23 hours yesterday.
  1. The shuttle van showed up right on time yesterday morning and we cruised off into the sunrise, with a last glance of the Ile St. Louis. Leaving from Charles de Gaulle proved quite a bit more complicated; in classic French customer service style, one security line was there to serve about three planes worth of people trying to leave, then we had to take a frigging bus to the plane itself. It was an appropriate "we never liked you anyway" moment from Paris to me on my way out.
  2. Speaking of frigging buses, if you're going to spend over four billion pounds upgrading your international terminal, does it really make sense that your customers have to take buses from plane to terminal? They might as well just have you run across the tarmac trying to dodge those stupid little trucks. Anyway, we had a tight connection, made tighter by all the unanticipated bus rides, but we made it.
  3. Ten hours is a lot of time to be on a plane.
  4. Um...then I got nailed by the fuzz. Apparently, someone with my name (I am not making this up) has been out there committing felonies, so I showed up on the watch list when they ran my passport in SFO. Of course, I was there with B and I look like a dorky 30 year-old academic, so the TSA guys were all like "um...we don't think we're looking for you." Then I had this funny conversation:
Young TSA guy: "Do you have any tattoos?"
KFR: "Um, yes."
YTSAG: "Where?"
KFR: "On my arms."
YTSAG: "Any on your neck?"
KFR: "No."

It was then that I realized I was wearing a great big scarf wrapped several times around my neck. For the first and only time in history, wearing a scarf made a man look more like a threat.

Anyway, I hope they catch that one of the 1636 people who share my (our) name(s) who's out there being nefarious so that I get pulled off the stupid Dick Cheyney fascism-in-action list.

In the meantime, who cares, I made it. Tune in for a lot of long-winded "France is like THIS, America is like THAT" posts in the future. You lucky kids.

6 comments:

Cody Austin Rich said...

Glad to hear that you're back. The next time I'm down south, it'll probably be to visit you two.

FOSCO said...

Welcome back! BTW, while you were gone, America got even suckier. Happy New Year!

P.S.: only 316 have my name...

Rachel said...

CDG is the worst airport ever. I had a 45 minute layover there, and was somehow supposed to get through customs, across the airport, and boarded in that time... except that yeah, the bus wasn't exactly there, and no one knew what was going on in the airport.... bad. VERY bad. Glad you made it home safely!

ninjahq said...

I love that you were asked if you have any tattoos :) And that anyone thought you might be dangerous :)x2

xoxo

kungfuramone said...

I guess the good thing is that my be-sweatered academic persona WAS so obviously innocuous that the feds WERE like "uh...this guy may be many things, but a felon he is not."

It's my equivalent of being a pretty girl who cries to get out of a speeding ticket.

Chrissy said...

yay for being home! welcome back!