Travel light, freeze at night...

 Operational wisdom from paratrooper daze.

   I don't fly around much anymore, getting old, and the entire TSA from DHS was silly, intrusive and frustrating - so I would rather get on the Trusty Triumph and sleep on rest stop picnic benches across the country.  But sometimes, when you have to be there, you go by air.

   I had to cross into the protected zone twice in the last week. The efficiency has improved, or I was traveling at not peak travel hours (yep, go late come back early). But we slid through the lines and agents smoothly. Don't know how they award Pre-checked status but my wife got it twice, and I was so blest once. My pacemaker and bulging belly make sure I am scanned by ghost radar, I have no idea, put your feet there hold your hands above your head so, and wait. Thank you, sir. No, I don't want a copy emailed to my friends on Facebook. Bad enough the NSA and DHS have to file it and match it to the last data.

  The good part of the airport is always beyond the security screening gates.  Lots of food and drink choices, gift shops and book stores.  But the best part will always be baggage pickup where you might be greeted by people that expect you and want to help - the last time you saw such people was when they helped drop you and your luggage off at departure/ticketing.

  I was flying United and associated lesser carriers. The take offs were roaring, the landing bumpy (but I always compare to my father's landing - which I am sure he liked to make so smooth) but all safe, and we would get to walk away. Limited first class seating, business class has disappeared on the flights I would get on -- what happens when one is fugal (read cheap!) - economy. The airline is in business to make a profit, and they do, the seats are smaller, leg room less unless you want to buy a little (VERY!) stretch room, as I walked out of the last airplane I notice the aisle is just wide enough for one more seat, and they could swim through the air above as soon as the anti gravity units start working -- the next Boeing project I have heard about.  But most of all, there were never any empty seats, none. Everything was full. At the price of aircraft, fuel and operations they have to be.

   I had much more room on the transit bus, which is how frugal and wife get to and from the airport without the participation of the parking garages. But the government run bus services are also where lots of public assisted folks ride - I have no idea if there is a government program for the poor in public assisted travel on commercial air - unless one looks at the business tax breaks, military, and government agency tickets that come from the tax payers.

   Well, I had best get real serious about that body beautiful project, I was brushing the seats on both sides of the aisle as I loaded my lard and unloaded my lazy moving about. Yes, walking across the country could make me slim again. That statue of the Minute Man is the way one ought to look in the RWVA. Lean, mean, fighting machine... oh, don't those fool paratrooper thoughts ever bubble up?  Then again, if I carried a musket and possibles - I might be given more room?