CLT

As I came through TSA in Charlotte the gate attendant asked for my passport. I reached into my jacket, and she said, “Wow! What kind of a jacket is that?” I told her. “It’s a Scott-E-Jacket, with about 25 pockets, each designated to hold a particular item. I always wear it when I travel. When you’re on a trip you never lose things, since you never take them out of their assigned pocket.” She had never seen one and was really impressed. “I gotta get me one of those things,” she said. It was a great way to begin an effortless pass through TSA.

The similarity between the airports of the world is really remarkable. They all look alike, feel alike, sound alike and smell alike. We started today in Charlotte, my hometown. Whenever your airplane takes off from runway 36L, its wheels leave ground that was my great grandfather’s farm. I grew up less than a mile from here, and if you know where to look, you can see my high school from the end of D Concourse. But the airport hardly feels like the place in which I grew up. I was mindlessly walking to our gate, noticing that this place feels like every other airport in the world, with the same kind of trendy pretentiousness and local civic promotion. Then I had a pleasant surprise. The Charlotte airport is trying to do a few things to remind people that this ain’t New York. For example, we waited for a couple hours for our flight, but instead of going to the gate, we availed ourselves of a couple of rocking chairs. They are placed in a long row lining the windows along the hallway so that you can see out onto the airport. They are not crowded so we will just stay here and rock leisurely as though we were on great grandma‘s front porch until the airplane boards. Great grandpa would be pleased.Baca lagi