Installment 1
Friday AM June 30
We used to drive the 8 hours/500 miles from Seattle to Ashland, but the trip down I-5 isn’t particularly scenic once you’ve done it a couple of times, and it robs 2 whole days from a trip that always seems too short in the first place. The last 3 or 4 years, we’ve been flying instead. With increased security and a plane transfer in Portland, the door-to-door flight ends up taking 4 hours, but it’s not 4 hours of staring at oncoming pavement. The flight itself can be very scenic, too, going over Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, the Columbia River, etc.
Checking through security at SeaTac, however, I believe I had my silliest experience with TSA. Mrs. Perils, and I with my arsenal of electronic devices, chargers and batteries, flew through the scanners. My mother, however, was detained for nearly 10 minutes while they ransacked her purse and ran it back through the scanner 3 times. Turned out she had 2 fingernail files secreted in its various pockets, and it took them a while to ID the second one. Why two? Was one for the left hand, one for the right? You have to wonder what’s to fear from a 90-pound, 76-year-old woman with a 3 inch fingernail file, but then you never saw her chase me through the house brandishing a hairbrush. Anyway, they passed her through in time to keep me from doing or saying something to get us all locked up.
If you’re doing short hops around the Northwest, you’ll almost always find yourself on a Horizon Airlines turboprop. The atmosphere is more relaxed and casual than on the main line airlines - you have to actually walk outside and climb up a set of stairs to the plane instead of using a jetway, and the crews are more colloquial and occasionally - gasp! - humorous in delivering their preflight spiels.
I was tickled to take my seat, look up the aisle into the cockpit and see this:
(Click to enlarge)
When we deplaned in Portland, the first officer set his bags on the tarmac:
You start to understand what it might be like to fly for a commuter airline. He, at least, got his luggage. Mrs. Perils’ bag ended up being routed to Spokane, and didn’t get delivered until Saturday morning.
