Tales of the TSA

They are watching.

And I guess that's the point. So unless I want to forgo security in air travel I can only say "Job well done".

As my wife and I traveled around on a total of five flights on our trip I was carefully managing, with mixed but adequate levels of success, my chronic back problems. And one of the key solutions I developed on this trip and am still doing now is a lot of self massage. Does it work? I don't really know. It seems to. It feels like it might. It's something to do to at least try to ward off the night. So there I am wandering Europe with one arm or the other wound up behind me, rubbing along my spine with the knuckles of my fist. Or there I am pressing into my lower back or shoulders with my fingertips. And since the most stressful and back challenging parts of our trip involved airports and lugging things about from one place to another, it was in airports where I was most dedicated to trying to keep the muscles of my back loose, and where I worked on them whenever I could.

Security went like this then:

Pretty much like it did for everyone else. The lines were all surprisingly modest. I lugged along a small backpack. I rubbed my back. Sometimes I had to take off my shoes, sometimes I didn't. I emptied everything out of all my pockets. I rubbed my back. I waited my turn. And I went through whatever detector they had set up without setting anything off.

For everyone else that was it. For me they had me wait and turn around. Then an agent briefly patted down my back to make sure there was nothing funny going on there, and they sent me on my way.

As I said, job well done.