Bienvenedos a Orlando
Yes, it's that time of year again. Time to bring down the safety industry from within using a combination of dark magic and gum disease. No, it's not the dreaded Rotfang Conspiracy. It's the annual ASSE conference, conveniently held in the most sauna-like location in the US. This desert rat doesn't know quite how to react to the grassy damp; I've been in this city exactly 96 minutes and I can feel mold taking hold of my ass-crack. Fortunatly my HoJo is close to everything: the Convention Center, Boston Lobster Bar, and Sea World, all of which I plan to visit in the next 24 hours. Stingrays. Penguins. Smug white guys embedded in a profession that seems to have no meaning to them other than the mundane trophies of Business Class. (Except for David, whose lifelong passions are rabble rousing and revolutionizing the protection of construction workers, both of which we hope to accomplish during the next four days. I do actually like attending the conference, though the more I learn about this industry the more fimrly convinced I am that David and I are outsiders looking in, despite (or maybe because of) his multiple decorations and obvious expertise. However, I'm finally starting to understand, even enjoy my role as safety spy. Anyhoo, I have high hopes for the conference.) So here I am, sitting in a "business center" strikingly similar to the Ham Hall computer room at MHC, wide awake and wanting to communicate after 9 hours of virtually mute air travel. Which leads me to recount, yet again, why the word "bemusing" increasingly pops to mind any time I have to arrive somewhere by plane.
Security. It's a reality, so I wasn't too surprised when they hand-inspected my carry-on bag at the Tucson airport. I was, after all, carrying a submarine sandwich and a styrafoam container of as-yet untested but potentially lethal Ranch Fries. Hey, you never know. All was in order, so I received my carry-on and caught my flight.
Water. I like it, so I bought a one-liter bottle during my layover in Dallas. (Hi Kristy!) Bored to all hell, I bought a pack of cigarettes and made my way outside. Upon return, the woman at the security checkpoint confiscated my beautiful, still sweating and UNOPENED bottle of water. Highly annoying, but I know the rules. I'll surrender my three-dollar bottle of Aquafina to keep America safe. Except. When I got to the gate I was plowing through my bag in search of reading material. What I found instead was a pair of mistakenly packed kitchen scissors. The 10-inch kind with the orange handles that my mother didn't let me use as a kid. Tim Rabbit calibur sharpness and able, I'm sure, to cause some real damage to a pilot's spleen.
Yup. My scissors got through not one but TWO "tightened" security checkpoints, even when my bag was hand searched. The water, however, had to go. Proper hydration kills, you know.
Safety first, guys. Safety first.