Driven to Air travel

Today, mom and I drove off from Ponca City, leaving Suki behind with Grandma. It's slightly less than two hours to Tulsa, where I dropped my car off at the long term parking at the airport. Unfortunately, the lots were busier than I expected. When we pulled up, I asked the gate attendent about the $6 per day parking I was expecting. "oh, that's across the railroad tracks, but its full anyway." So, I ended up opting for the last spot in the $7.50 lot. The service was really nice though. The airport shuttle guided me to the spot, the driver gave me a card with my exact location on it, and whisked mom and I away to the terminal.

After driving to Ponca City, and finding a $250 RT flight to St.Louis, I decided to book it. Now I'm kind of questioning my decision. Driving back to St.Louis would have taken about $40 for gas and munchies, and about six to seven hours. So total cost is around $80 plus the risk of driving for 7 hours alone two times in chancy winter weather. I already have to make a return trip when I pick up Suki, and I was not looking forward to making the 8 hour journey four times. On the flip side, tickets cost me about $250, plus I'm looking at over $100 for parking, plus I'm getting in to St.Louis several hours later than if I had actually just dropped mom at the airport and driven. So its not really a time savings or a cost savings by any stretch of the imagination. It's more convenient, but I hate airports and airline travel. Not sure I would do this again.

Anyway, in Tulsa, mom and I went through the TSA security (theater) checkpoint separately, and we when we met up on the other side, we realized that we had both declined to go through the backscatter "naked" xray scanners. My TSA agent was very professional, and explained what he was going to do and exactly where his hands were going to be. Overall, less intrusive than I was expecting. Probably doubled the amount of time it took to get me through security though.

I object to the use of the backscatter Xray scanner specifically, and the knee-jerk idiocy of the overall TSA security policies in general.  I don't approve of the shady connections and deals that went on between the single manufacturer of the machienes and the director of the TSA, I don't approve of how the TSA lied about the machine's capabilities to store images and transmit them online, and I don't approve of this new intrusion into my personal privacy. All of this was ok to the other passengers checking in, however. I think mom and I were the only ones I saw getting a pat down.

::steps down from soap box::

So, I transferred at Atlanta, and my flight was delayed an hour. (It was snowing in Atlanta and the airport was dealing with the chaos of a raft of cancellations in the NE). But, now I'm on the flight to St.Louis, we're about 40 minutes behind schedule, sitting in an aisle seat with an empty middle, and connected to the internet on a plane! So that is pretty cool. :) Here we go decending....