My Wife and I Separated... Thanks to the TSA!

I’m sitting in the C concourse at Tampa International Airport on what should be a normal Monday morning, viewing a spectacular sunrise that offers promise for a glorious day.  But I’m feeling no joy – only bitterness and malice toward all mankind.  Especially toward the United States government, and more specifically the TSA.

The Transportation Safety Administration is apparently now in the business of marriage disruption.  Maybe they’re also in cahoots with certain qualifying airlines, of which Southwest Airlines is one.  Maybe Southwest should take a share of the blame here.  I’ll never know, as everyone seems to be tight-lipped about this latest outrage.

There’s a special service the TSA offers; it’s called TSA Pre✓^®.  (It took me a while to figure out that means pre-check.  It’s early morning, after all!)  This makes sense for the frequent flyer.  You pay an $85 dollar fee and provide the necessary ID and fingerprints, and for a five-year period you get to join the privileged class.

Airlines which currently participate in this program are:  Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, OneJet, Southwest Airlines, Sun Country, United Airlines, Virgin America and WestJet.

Each new member of this “happy flyer club” is assigned a KTN:  Known Traveler Number.  A traveler simply uses this number when making his or her flight reservations, and then the magic begins.  When passengers print out their boarding passes, or download them to their mobile devices, a notation comes up indicating they have a TSA Precheck.

There are two lines at 150 airports (where the 12 participating airlines operate) and this is where the class struggle begins.  There are two lines that passengers are herded into.  One line is tended by demons from hell, snarling at passengers and prodding them with pitchforks – almost like running cattle down the chute at a slaughterhouse.  The passengers have to remove just about everything from their person, take their shoes and belts off, remove laptops from their cases and then go stand in a scanner while holding their hands above their heads, doing their best Bullwinkle Moose impersonation.

The other line is a little different.  People skip merrily down the path, pass under a rainbow and are greeted cheerily.  They don’t have to remove shoes, belts or laptops.  They don’t have to have their liquids out for inspection, and the best part of all – they pass through the checkpoint in rapid style and quickly emerge on “the other side”.

So why am I bitching about this?  People who paid their fee and passed the application process should reap the benefits, right?  Absolutely.  This is NOT the problem.  My dissatisfaction is from something much more sinister.

The TSA, assumedly in conjunction with the airlines, issues random prechecks on select boarding passes.  Today, my wife was given this special gift, while I was not.  This meant we were separated when we reached the TSA checkpoint, and while I stayed in the group of suffering humanity, she was whisked through the process almost instantly, and was then seen smiling and waving back at me from the other side.  Bitch!

Hours later I finally made it through, battered and weary from the experience while she was happy and refreshed.  “I didn’t have to do anything!  I didn’t have to take off my belt or shoes, didn’t have to remove the laptop from the case and I just walked through the scanner… I didn’t have to stand there or nothing!”

“Yeah,” I said, “I noticed.”

“It was almost like old times,” she said, giving a nod back to the “good old days” when you checked in and then just went straight to your gate.

I was so happy for her.  Actually, I was seething.  The TSA was behaving much like a drug dealer; they gave her a random taste of the drug known as “precheck”, and now that she’s hooked… it’s $85, baby… or back to the line of misery you go! 

All I can say after this experience is this:  “Sweetie… don’t forget how to take your shoes off!”  Withdrawal can be tough!

The Florida Tandem Rally -- or -- Why Am I Here?

Tandem riders saying their "good mornings" prior to the
start of the 6th Annual Florida Tandem Rally.

This weekend finds us willingly riding with countless other tandem riders in the 6^thAnnual Florida Tandem Rally, which hubs from The Villages in central Florida.  The rides start at 9:00 AM, and there are a few different mileage options to pick from: 33, 43 and 55 miles.  We opted for the 43 miler because once we ride to the starting point and then back home again, we’ll have 50 miles in for the day.

Florida is rumored to be flat.  As far as I know this is generally true, but the joker in charge of the routes knows where every hill in the area is located and made sure we got to experience them ALL.  One of my iPhone apps claims that we climbed 940 feet today; my legs say that we climbed much more than that.  We won’t even listen to what my butt is telling me…

So why are we here?  As with most cycling events, be it the “normal” single bike riders who come together for event rides or us tandem “crazies” – we pay a fee for the privilege of riding together.  In the event of a charity ride, most of the proceeds go toward the cause; with a tandem rally most of the proceeds go right into social events surrounding the ride weekend, or into the ride organization itself.

When it comes to a tandem rally, some of the allure is to be around other tandem riders.  In fact, it’s usually a LOT of other tandem riders.  Earlier this year we rode in the Northwest Tandem Rally over the 4^th of July weekend in Bellingham, Washington; there were nearly 400 tandems there.  In the cycling world where a tandem seems to be a bit of an oddity, suddenly for an extended weekend you’re immersed in a culture where tandem riding is the “norm” – and you’re surrounded by people who not only love to ride these long bikes, but they understand why you love to ride them.

An over-the-shoulder view of my stoker
and some tandems behind us.

The Florida Tandem Rally doesn’t have the kind of drawing power that the bigger regional rallies have, but it still pulls in several tandem teams from within the state and beyond.  Some of these people are meeting others at the rally for the first time; others are old friends and acquaintances that have met at past rallies, and this is a way of reconnecting and sharing riding stories.  (Sometime they seem as grand as fish stories, but they’re always more believable!)

But all this aside, the question still looms:  why are we here?  We can ride any day we choose back home for free, yet we choose the expense involved to come congregate with other tandem riders for just a brief weekend of sharing the road together.  And it’s not like we’re actually riding in a pack the whole day – everybody tends to spread out after a while and only the best of friends seem to stay in contact with each other for the whole ride. 

There’s often an ice-cream social to kick a tandem rally off, and usually a large banquet at some point during the rally weekend, so there’s fraternization off the bike as well.  And then there’s the final day’s ride after which people pack up and go back home to their normal, every day lives.  So why arewe here?

Perhaps it’s because a tandem rally is much like an extended family reunion, where we once again touch base with people we’ve met before and meet new members of the tandem community for the first time.  Maybe it’s because we like being with other people who understand why riding a tandem is so… well, right.  Maybe the bottom line is that we’re here because it’s fun, and if it’s not fun, why do it?  We plan to keep doing things like this for as many years as we can.  Why?  Because it’s fun!

My Tandem Inspiration

Somewhere between Sun Valley, ID and Galena Summit
on a chilly September Idaho morning in the year 2000.

Most of us learned how to ride a bicycle while we were quite young.  Can you recall the exhilaration of mastering that skill and finding that one of the doors to independence had finally been opened to you?  I vividly remember being seven years old, and that particular year found Christmas day to be a foggy, bleak looking affair.

After opening what amounted to be a few pretty decent presents, my father asked me to go out to the garage and bring something back in for him.  I plodded out to the garage, opened the door and… wow!  There before me sat the most beautiful piece of machinery any kid in the early 60’s could ever hope to possess: a shiny, brand new, never-been-touched, Schwinn Stingray!

Into the misty morning I rode, free at last from the shackles that forced me to walk everywhere I wished to go!  It was a bitterly cold morning, but I didn’t care; I would ride to all ends of the earth on my new steed – the adventures were only beginning!

Of course, as time went by the Stingray was replaced by a Schwinn Continental (a ten speed bike), which only opened the doors to travel even more.  I spent much of my free time pedaling somewhere, and loving every minute of it.  But inasmuch as I loved to pedal all over San Diego, this joy was replaced by an item that easily fits into any man’s wallet:  a driver’s license.

Well, so much for my early history.  When many young adults receive their driver’s license, they never look back at cycling.  For that matter, many of these people never engage in any kind of healthy activity again.  Yet there was something within me that still wanted to get out on a bike... along with a deeper secret that I had kept suppressed for many years.

I witnessed something in San Diego that planted a seed within my soul, and would ultimately change my life.  Many times while I was out riding, I would see an old couple go zipping by on a tandem – yes, that’s right – a bicycle-built-for-two.  These two looked like they were in their mid-sixties, and while their faces showed the wear of age, their bodies looked pretty lean and muscular, at least compared to most of the old folks that I knew.

For as much as I loved to pedal around the greater San Diego area, these two must have loved to do so equally, because it seemed that I saw them everywhere.  And I knew that someday I wanted to be just like them.  Unbeknownst to that husband-and-wife tandem team, they were my tandem cycling mentors, and I owe them a huge debt of thanks.

Fast forward to the year 2015: I’ve been riding a tandem with my wife, Valerie, for the past twenty-four years.  Short rides, long rides, part of the California coast, part of England, part of France.  We love to get out and actually go places!

We’ve ridden in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Florida and British Columbia.  We’ve pedaled on Market Street in San Francisco, from the Embarcadero to a “shortcut” know as “the wiggle” – a series of right and left turns that leads you from the city to Golden Gate Park with the least amount of effort and elevation gain.  We’ve also cycled from Fisherman’s Wharf and grunted our way to the Pacific Ocean via some hilly roads in the Presidio – nowhere near as easy as riding “the wiggle”!

We’ve had some great rides in the past, and we’re looking forward to many outstanding rides in the future, until we just can’t ride any more.  There’s one ride I wish we could take that will, sadly, always remain just a dream.  It’s just not possible except in my dreams.  Oh, but if I could take that ride, I’d go today!  Valerie and I would be pedaling as fast as we could, when the countryside around us would begin to blur and then fade away as we reemerged into the familiar scenery that was late 1960’s San Diego.

Up ahead of us a short distance is an elderly couple on a tandem, and although it takes us a little while we’re finally able to pull up along side of them.  I look over at the captain and stoker of more years than I’ll ever know and shout, “You guys are incredible!  There’s a great café just down this road a few miles – if you’re not in too big a hurry, could we stop there and buy you lunch?”

Perhaps if Heaven has a bike path, I’ll still have a chance to properly thank my unsuspecting mentors.

Profiling By Shopping Cart Returns

I have a very bad habit; I tend to profile the caliber of a store’s customers by where they leave their shopping carts in the parking lot when they’re finished shopping.  Don’t laugh!  Instead, try this yourself sometime – you’ll never look at a parking lot in the same way again!

Are the people responsible enough to push the cart back to the nearest cart-corral, or do they just leave the shopping cart next to where they were parked poised to roll into the car next to them the first time the wind blows?  Or do they make the half-hearted attempt to keep the cart from rolling away by putting its front wheels up over a curb or in some landscaping… yet still having to avoid the dreaded walk to the cart-corral?

Rarely is there an excuse for these lazy slobs that I would ever accept (or even consider).  Folks… you just got done pushing that shopping cart all over the store, with an ever-increasing load and then pushed it all the way out to where you parked.  Do you mean to tell me that you were so spent after transferring your groceries to your trunk that you couldn’t push the now empty (and therefore lighter) cart back to the cart-corral?

From my bigoted standpoint I must conclude that in my area, CostCo patrons are the greatest people alive today.  There are fewer return areas for carts and the distances to these cart-corrals are sometimes extreme.  A person might have to walk a couple of lanes over and down to the end of the row… but these brave souls make the journey!  Bravo to you, CostCo shoppers; you’re all heroes in my book!

The mid-range customers shop at stores like Albertson’s or Fred Meyer (a Kroger concern in the northwest).  If there’s a cart-corral somewhat close, they’ll usually make the effort.  But sometimes they’re in just too much of a hurry and so the cart will be left where their car used to be.  The cart-return behavior of these people earns them the moniker of “Almond Joy Shoppers”:  Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don’t.  (Substitute the phrase “returning your cart” for the word “nut” if you’re too young to remember that old advertising jingle.)

And then there’s Wal-Mart.  Oh, scum of the Earth! Wal-Mart shopper is thy name!  Every time I drive through our local Wal-Mart parking lot it is littered with shopping carts everywhere.  In the middle of the road where they’ve rolled, next to (or up against) a parked car in the space next to where they were unloaded, and the one that really gets me worked up into a lather… the people who park right next to the cart-corral leave the cart right there on the outside of the corral where they loaded up their car.  They can’t take three steps backwards and then push the cart into the corral with the other few carts that a few lost, responsible souls actually managed to put away.  There’s a reason that you Wal-Mart shoppers have a website dedicated to you!

So please, dear reader, the next time you go out shopping – take a look around and see where the shopping carts are at your local store.  Shopping cart profiling can be fun, doesn’t cost you anything and gives you something to look forward to when you visit different shopping centers in your area.

Oh, yes… one last thing:  put the damned cart away when you’re done shopping so I don’t wind up writing about you!

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It's time for a little "truth in advertising" here.  The above photo was staged.  Absolute fakery involved... nothing real about it.  I had to pull the cart OUT of the corral and place it where you see it.  Why?  Because my shopping cart profiling WORKS!  This Walmart is located in The Villages, Florida – a golfing retirement community boasting a population of 100,000 according to a recent Bloomberg article.  The point I’m making is that THESE people are active, responsible and basically give a crap about their surroundings.  (I stopped at a Walmart in Gainesville yesterday where the opposite was true; I SHOULD have take a picture there.  No alteration would have been necessary!)  The Villages’ Walmart accurately depicts the caliber of its shoppers!

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They Only Come Out At Night?

In the first installment of this article, I sang the praises of The Villages’ Walmart shoppers, and how nicely they put their shopping carts back after loading up their cars.  When I observed this pristine quality, it was in the morning hours. 

I forgot two important factors:  this Walmart is not exclusive to the residents of The Villages.  The outlying community also shops here.  And perhaps the most important rule to remember is that the “real Walmart shoppers” only come out at night!

I had to make a quick trip to the Walmart to pick up an incidental item for my wife: a seam ripper.  There was a Walgreen’s much closer to our vacation rental, but they sell the seam ripper in a combo pack with a measuring tape and added almost three dollars to the price.  No thanks.  I’ll take my chances and go walk around those who only go to Walmart at night.

There’s a certain corner of the parking lot I usually pull into, away from most of the turmoil of people trying to find something close to the front door.  True to form there weren’t many cars out there, but what should greet my unsuspecting eyes?  A plethora of shopping carts left anywhere but in the corrals.  I counted eight carts in total just in this small, uninhabited corner of the parking lot.  (Who knows what kind of cart carnage could be found in the rest of the lot?)

Really?  I can see the cart-corral from here!  It's NOT that far!
It took more energy to tip the cart over than to put it away!

Three were placed with the front wheels tipped up into the curbing of the landscaped edges of the parking lot.  Three were just left in spaces next to where their users loaded their cars, one was conscientiously pushed up against the cart corral (exactly like in the “staged” photo above) and the final cart was just lying there on its side, partially out in the lane.

I snapped the photo of that cart, and then righted it and pushed it back to a nearby cart corral, only about three parking spaces away from the cart’s “resting” spot.  Then I walked toward the entrance of Walmart, knowing that I would be walking amongst a different caliber of clientele: the Walmart shoppers that only come out at night!

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Do you have any “award-winning” stores that you frequent where the parking lot looks more like a war-zone than a loading zone?  Share the juicy details with us by leaving a comment!