Holding on. I now have 13 versions of All Along the Watchtower on my iPod. For every occasion.
This was my worst air trip yet. And that includes the puke-inducing migraines and the drunk Brit episode.
On the second leg of our journey to Winnipeg for a speaking engagement, Simone, my co-presenter, realized she'd left her U.S. passport behind. The airline would not board her for Canada, citing potential $50,000 fines. The U.S. consul in Winnipeg tried to intervene. The airline refused. Simone headed in tears for the O'Hare Hilton. I boarded for Winnipeg.
My true destination? Panic. I had three hours of material for a six-hour gig.
Happy ending though. YAY! United pulled through. Simone's passport arrived via cockpit express at O'Hare early next morning. She landed in Winnipeg a little after noon. The Winnipeggers (yay, Leslie!) performed like a precision drill team: urgent cell phones, racing car rides, the lot. Simone strode in to applause and took up her duties. Brilliant, too. Top of her game.
Okay.
Yet somehow .... leaving Canada, dragging my luggage around downtown Winnipeg, merrily photographing Nutty Club signs (from a certain view, the mascot did look deranged), already late for the plane, I picked up traces of explosive materials.
Security detained me. A deliberate, skeptical bunch they were. The pat-down was so intimate and frank that he and I really should have married (sigh). Simone was dancing from one foot to the other. Volcanologists know the signs. She kept trying out her objections on me. She's a hater: of bureaucracy, of poor management.
"Oh, please, my honey," I'd whisper, "please don't say that." We boarded frantically at the very last moment. I'd departed her in Chicago. She was fully prepared to depart me in Winnipeg. "Let's go home." We both said it.
Home in Rhode Island, where at this time of year the mating frogs sound like the bed springs of the metal gods, is where I discovered that the U.S. Transportation Security Adminstration (TSA), an arm of Homeland Security, for whom's mission I should be grateful, had slipped a note into my luggage, letting me know that, despite the Winnipeg rush, they'd been vigilant and rifled my unclean underwear. "To protect you and your fellow passengers, the TSA is required by law to inspect all checked luggage." The card said.
They'd yanked out my gloves. Packed on the chance that ambient Winnipeg's temperature fell below sufferable (it did not). TSA returned just one, you classic dipsh*ts. It was the left glove, my right-brained hand. Maybe it was a statement, from the sinistral side.
Do gloves exist to get lost? This particular pair was an indulgence, hand-stitched by a second-generation glovemaker in Millau, France; cost me around 90 euros; $135. What's the sound of one expensive glove clapping?
But then. Today, one of America's foremost charities phoned BEGGING for my help with a $500 million case. Which group has vowed to reverse global warming? I now know. Balance achieved. Lost gloves. Found cause.
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