traveling

I'm not a good traveler. This isn't really news; I've never been a good traveler. Flying makes me feel sick. I get nervous that I'm going to miss my plane, but if I get there too early I get bored from waiting too long in the airport. I don't like airport food, but I always eat way too many calories anyway (stupid Swedish fish).

Anyway, last weekend I flew to DC for a baby shower and to visit a law school friend. The flying was actually remarkable good. I had direct flights at good times. I dressed well - wasn't too hot or too cold on the plane. I wasn't seated next to someone who smelled like a bar (ug, my last trip involved this at 8 am and even though I wasn't the one who was hungover, I wanted to throw up).

The interesting moment this time actually came on my way back to my apartment - riding the metrolink. The airport here is an endpoint for our public transit system, so it waits a while on the tracks at the airport. As I'm sitting there reading my book, I notice this guy. He gets on the train, sets down two large bags, and leaves. Doesn't just move a couple seats from his bags, doesn't go to talk to somebody, doesn't go help someone else get their stuff on the train. Just, leaves. No one else seems to notice.

This is when I discover that if someone wanted to have a terrorist attack near me (or apparently those other people as well), they could easily do it. Even though I am well aware of the signs in the train that say, "please notify personnel if you see bags left unattended" especially at the airport where they are saying that every five minutes, I didn't report those bags. I didn't want to cause any trouble. Instead, what I did was calmly get up and move to the other end of the train. I decided that if the guy didn't come back before the train left the station, I would press the help button. Luckily a few minutes later, the guy did come back and sit with his stuff so my freaking out a little bit was for nothing. Still - part of me worries - what if he had intended to blow up the train. Certainly no one would have done anything.