I guess if you are in an airport, mother nature got screwed anyway, but everything about the airport experience tells me to never fly again.

You can’t put so much more than a car key in your carry-on, for fear you will use it to commandeer an aircraft (let us not mention the axe in the cockpit), so we are forced to check baggage or just buy all new stuff at your destination. All US carriers now charge an extra $25 pre bag for luggage when flying in from Canada. Apparently Air Canada does as well. No warning ahead of time, only when the electronic kiosk that replaced a person in the airport asks for your credit card. Of course, at that point, what can you do, complain?

Then there is the theatre of airport security. Every three steps someone checks your boarding pass, you must fill out this form here, carry it through three checkpoints, picking up another form there, remove your shoes, belts, dignity or anything else with mass, drop off the first form, give your life history and vacation plan, drop another form there. Does anyone actually think there rituals make us safer?

Figuring it would be nice to bring some BC produce to our hosts in Illinois, we decided to pick up a couple of bottles of BC wine at the Duty Free. The middle aged lady at the Duty Free shop proceeded to pull out two separate plastic bags and put a bottle in each. We asked for only one bag. She paused, processed, and then grabbed a third plastic bag, wrapped a bottle in it, stuffed it into one bag then stuffed it all into the second bag with the other bottle. Was she trying to spite us? Was this some sort of reaction to our provocation?

No, it was a misunderstanding. We had to explain to her the idea was that we only wanted one bag, you know, the environment and all… completely baffled her. It was like we were asking her to do vector calculus. She froze. Confused. Needed a reboot. No-one in 40 years of work or personal life had ever introduced to her the idea that one may want to reduce the amount of free plastic they get. Zero Waste has a long way to go.

The only saving grace of airports is they have airport bars. This one was out of beer.

Vacation on.