Alternatives To Flying : Hitting The TSA Gropers In The Wallet
75Do You Really HAVE TO Fly?
There are plenty of American citizens who need to fly commercially, TSA gropers and all. Their jobs require it, for example, and they can't afford to tell the boss to "Take this job and shove it" if they want to keep paying the mortgage. Okay, I get that.
But there's another side of this coin.
A lot of us don't absolutely need to fly. Instead, we do it because (a) we're in the habit, (b) we've come to mistake speed for need, or (c) we just don't know how to think outside the box. That's understandable. Beyond that, it's human nature.
Fortunately, there are renegades among us. Thinkers willing to, in Sarah Palin's words, "go rogue", come up with alternatives to having total strangers feel us up without paying us one thin dime for the privilege of touching our junk. Readers of independent mind may be able to add plenty of great ideas, but let's start with just a few tested and proven ways to avoid flying altogether:
1. The Long Distance Funeral. We live in southeastern Arizona, just a mile from the Mexican border. My wife's elderly stepmother lives in the Portland, Oregon, area, some 1325 road miles from her (via the shortest route we've figured to date). What will happen when Stepmommy Dearest passes from the planet? It's flying time, right?
Wrong. Pam's brother, Todd, will start from Portland the same morning Pam and I start from Palominas. We'll meet at a Super 8 motel located 702 miles from us, 623 miles from Todd. Spend the night. The following a.m., Pam will ride on to Portland with her bro while I return to our border fort. Our home will have been unattended for just one night, and all will be cool.
Then, whenever Todd can get by without his Sis, we'll reverse the procedure.
2. The Business Meeting. This one is already happening...a lot. Back in the day, it was ho-hum, 'nother day in the saddle--hop on a jet, go meet with a handful of people in the Seattle office, jet back to San Diego the next day. More recently, however, business meetings have increasingly been handled online via systems like those available at gotomeeting.com.
Though I've been out of the corporate loop for some time now, I well remember scratching my head at the waste of time and commercial airfare dollars whenever my employer sent me on one of those trips. The Internet has begun changing how we do business in numerous ways...and this is one of them.
3. Home For The Holidays. Okay, so you've just gotta hop on that jumbo jet, get on yonder to Grandma's house...right? Must be so; we see increased airport congestion every Thanksgiving and Christmas. But college students get around the air hassle (and cost) issue every time by posting notices on bulletin boards and forming carpools. With the right mix, you even get enough safe drivers to keep the car rolling almost nonstop until the destination is reached.
There's also the "OTR solution". Every over the road (long haul) truck driver knows this one: A single driver keeps himself awake for not only hours but sometimes days on end. Not recommending you try this one at home, though--unless you're a professional trucker developed the skill set to make this happen safely (which in many cases takes years if it happens at all).
To Fix The Problem
Clearly, the ideal solution would be to handle our air travel security in a sensible manner so that Americans could once again feel comfortable with the idea of grabbing the kids and heading for the airport. It may require a new President to pass the word first, unfortunately--Obama is clearly in favor of the current invasive TSA patdown techniques. It will most likely mean scrapping TSA and starting over entirely, too...because effectively retraining all of those securigoons is likely to prove to be a literal impossibility.
Which means that We the People most likely have a bit more than two years of volcanic outrage yet ahead of us. I hope I'm wrong about that--hate to sound as pessimistic as Glenn Beck or Michael Savage--but if I'm right, we're going to need to know how to get where we're going without spreading our legs for the Mad Groper.
Feel free to suggest additional alternatives to those listed here!
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Thanks, Earth Angel. Having a (formerly) licensed pilot check in with a viewpoint similar to my own is really...validating!
Glad you mentioned train and/or bus travel. Should perhaps have done so myself--at least, as I was writing, the movie, PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES (Steve Martin & John Candy) kept coming to mind. No Greyhound in that one, though.
You do bring up a dynamite point--mm, wait, poor choice of words--okay, an EXCELLENT point about sanitary napkins and Depends. Likewise, I did know a lady who once had a cast on a broken leg and used that cast to smuggle drugs hither, thither, and yon for a while...explosives wouldn't be much of a stretch.
I'm aware of Megatrends but haven't actually read it.
It does look to me like our collective consciousness regarding the matter is rising rapidly--OPTIMIZM RULEZ!!
I also live in Arizona and plan on flying to Baltimore to visit family for Christmas. Unfortunately, I really don't see any other alternative to flying (even Amtrak is $600+ and 105 hours round-trip). So instead I've contacted the airports to see how many (and where) the AITs are located. FYI, Phoenix Sky Harbor has only 1 machine, and it's at Terminal 4 Checkpoint B. So I can just use one of the other checkpoints (A, C, or D) and use the moving sidewalks to walk further to my gate.
EXCELLENT post, Phoenix. THANK YOU for this info/insight. While the TSA is (according to news reports) planning to install a lot more of those booty scanners, travelers might as well take advantage of whatever window of opportunity we have for the moment.
Great hub. I was thinking about how horrible airports and airlines are in general. In a few years, oil will be too expensive for the airline business. This country really needs a mag lev train system like they have in Asia and Europe.
That's a thought--on the oil, that is. Being pretty familiar with the oil industry in general (partly through having worked in the oil patch as both roughneck and truck driver), I'm not 100% certain your forecast is accurate. But it certainly could be.
I'm totally ignorant regarding the mag lev train system. Maybe should research that a touch....:)
About the "horrible airport" aspect: In February of 1993, I missed a plane change at Denver and had to spend the night in DIA itself, cat napping in various chairs and otherwise wandering aimlessly about. Try that today, I'm pretty sure I'd be "probed and booked" as an obvious VT (Vagrant Terrorist).
Airlines are the only travel industry that get to treat their customers like second-class citizens, on the ground AND in the air. So I refuse to fly again until 1) pilots have to take a piss test immediately before each flight, after proving they've had a good night's rest, and 2) same for train engineers and bus drivers before getting in the cab or behind the wheel. The first because the only U.S. air disasters since 9/11 were caused not by a bomb sneaked on by a passenger, but by over-worked or drunk pilots. The second because a person can get just as dead in a train wreck or bus crash as in a plane crash, and it chaps my chops that only air passengers have been singled out as potential murderers.
Oh yeah, in light of last week's potential for disaster at the WashDC airport, add security cameras trained on every air traffic controller so they can't nap or leave the tower for a little hank-panky in the parking lot when there are planes requesting permission to land.
Until then, I'll do my traveling by car.
...and then there's the recent newsflash about the lone traffic controller being sound asleep so that the pilots had to land by the seats of their britches!
Yep, that's the one.
Missed the part about hanky-panky in the parking lot. Nap after, maybe.
lol! Well, nobody knows for sure what he was doing when he was AWOL from his duties, only that *normally* there are NO flights coming in or going out of DC after midnight, so he may've been habitually AWOL from his duties after midnight and finally got caught.
No doubt!
Reminds me: Nothing to do with airplanes, but the Colorado trucking company for whom I last worked once caught a driver in the act of taking the AWOL thing more than a bit too far. He was, like me, a full time night shift guy. On that shift, it's not unusual to desperately need a quick nap, and the bosses--all former drivers themselves--understood that. Twenty minutes once or even twice a night was not cause for concern.
But concerns HAD been raised about this man, so the mechanics slapped a GPS tracking unit on his truck. (All of their trucks have them now, but did not at that time.)
After he was fired, one of the managers showed us on the computer exactly where the truant had gone that night: Stopped off at his home on the eastbound leg, one hour plus. Same on the return. Plus three hours sleeping in the truck yard.
Which explained why he'd only managed to haul one load to the disposal out of state disposal site when the rest of us were managing two and often three....
Those GPS trackers have forced a LOT of people to start earning their paychecks! By the same token, a device to monitor them in the hands of over-zealous Smokies have the ability to put the lie to a LOT of logbooks. "Waddaya mean, Officer, I didn't stop and sleep after after 8 hours behind the wheel? Says right here I did, dudn't it". ;D
Fortunately for the average trucker, the GPS units are SO FAR only accessible by the company managers--not usually the Smokies, unless maybe for a serious subpeona case like a serial killer driving a truck (there are some).
However, there's an exception to that, pioneered by Werner Enterprises some years back and spreading to other motor carriers from there. That is the electronic logbook which eliminates three things:
1. Drivers waiting until they stopped and then jiggering their paper logs to make their service hours look to be in compliance.
2. Drivers making any damned money at all.
3. Drivers delivering loads on time.
I got out of the industry before the trend could catch up to my employer but could feel the Devil's fiery breath scorching my neck hairs.
Considering if it's on a shelf in your local store, it got there in a truck, it makes no sense to drive truckers away from trucking. My son's dad was a trucker and felt sorry for the blokes who from companies that had governors on their engines. Isn't hard to spot 'em on the road. Every other 18-wheeler will be whizzing along at 75, 80, and they're (not by choice) poking along at 60. If a medical condition hadn't forced him to quit, GPS trackers would have.
And for what it's worth, truckers as a whole are the safest drivers on the road. I'd rather share the road with trucks than 4-wheelers any day. I *know* what a trucker will do in a crunch, but a 4-wheeler...no clue.
I was one of those poking along, although a little better than 60--the long haul outfit I drove for had the engines governed at 67...which I didn't consider all that bad.
Swift, on the other hand, had theirs crunched down to 55 for several years. Not exactly flying; my wife and I called 'em Notso Swift. They finally moved up to 63, or at least that's where it was in late 2006. Apparently the Cat engines were breaking down early from runnng too slow, but Cat wouldn't replace them--saying (correctly) the breakdowns were caused by Diesel Abuse! (Or words to that effect.)
So, as an alternative to constantly having to buy new engines, they (Swift) upped the governor speed just a bit.
On my last job driving on/offroad tankers in the oilpatch, much of the travel was over 25mph-or-less twisty mountain dirt roads--but for the portion where we were running over the freeway, no governors. And yeah, most of the trucks, even geared down for heavy duty offroad hauling as they were, would run a steady 75 or close to it. Without being groped!
When my Mom died, a few years back, we made it in 24 hours. We have a big van so Dennis and I loaded up the kids and dog, got the neighbor teens to feed the livestock and headed out. We shift drove and took naps in the passenger seat. The seats all recline and the back one is a short bed. Lay them all down and it is one big bed back there. When the driver got tired, we would pull over, rest room break, food break and go on with fresh driver.
Understood. Most of my hardcore runs have been done without a driving partner, but four of us did cover something like 1700 miles (maybe a bit more) in 1967. I'd driven down to my second year of mandatory Fun in the Sand with the Army Reserves (nobody told us when we were drafted that two years didn't really end our obligations, doncha know)...anyway, I'd driven down alone, but three other guys who'd taken the bus from Montana rode back with me.
The car was a 1960 Chevy running on regular and STP (without which it burned oil like crazy) and with the thermostat removed to make it through the Nevada desert especially. Shift driving, like you did, except that we had more drivers--and the youngest kid, new to us (the other two were men I'd served with) was a piss-poor hand behind the wheel. Scared the bejeebers out of the rest of us, so that I took my shift (the final leg) early.
But anyway, for much of the run (and certainly through the Nevada desert), it was hammer down, 283 V-8, 90 mph. much of the time. Never picked up a Highway Patrol tail, never got killed by the dummy driver, and I was back home (like you said) in roughly 24 hours. Maybe 26.
Can't QUITE do that without a little help....:)
Ours was from Nashville area to Reno. Old beat up looking van but it ran good. Had an oil leak but if we used the Lucas oil additive it didn't leak much and it was in March.
Lucas is good stuff, definitely.
Have I told you how much I love the picture of the trucks? I am totally amazed that they have all that on there, the trucks still move and it doesn't all fall off.
Hey, I'm just as impressed with that as you are!
It's too bad they are now conducting grope-downs at NFL games too. More people need to get on board with hitting them in the pocket book before it's too late! Thanks Ghost32
I wasn't up on the NFL gropes. Thanks for the clue-in.
Voted up. Here's an alternative from Dirty Larry, if you're a MAN, and absolutely have to fly. (No, I have not actually done this, because I haven't flown for many years.)
Explain that you're severely homophobic, and insist that the TSA groper be a FEMALE agent. Afterward, thank her for best sex you've had all day, and slip her a $5 tip. Having a little entertainment at the expense of the TSA would be worth the extra money. Who knows? Maybe it'll catch on. :-)
That would make a great YouTube video. In real life, though, I'll bet they'd find a way to arrest you for being a smarta##...or something. :)
Earth Angel Level 3 Commenter 18 months ago
You are too funny Ghost!!
Again, Congratulations on your Hub-Milestone!!
Although we are probably polar opposites on so many issues, I do appreciate your wild candor and independent perspective!
In the early 1990's the book Megatrends predicted the demise of air travel - mostly due to high competition which forces ticket prices down - resulting in the airlines making cuts to maintenance and repairs - causing more accidents!
Then 9/11!
Then our 'asleep at the wheel' complacency!
Many of us agree with you, took the warnings seriously, and came up with alternatives to air travel! (I used to have my pilot's license!)
Don't forget train travel or bus travel! Amazingly inexpensive if you have the time! Which really, we all do with a little better planning!
Back to the airline pat downs - which do seem ridiculously ineffective to me!
At the risk of sounding indelicate, a regular sanitary napkin, worn by thousands of women at any given time, is much larger than the crotch-bomb found in the terrorists underwear!
Many of our seniors wear Depends (disposable underwear with optional thick pads to aid incontinence) especially on long flights!
I am hoping a collective consciousness is raising to the absurdity of our feeble attempts to create the illusion of safety!
Keep writing!! Keep sharing!!
Blessings always, Earth Angel!