At Dulles International Airport near Washington, one traveler reported that screeners were also making passengers remove all food items from their carry-ons for inspection, and one passenger was told to peel her banana. - The New York Times

TSA Screener: Next in line.

Passenger: Hi there, officer.

Screener: Sir, I’m not an officer and please refrain from chit-chat. (Reaches in passenger’s bag and finds something frozen solid.) Sir, what’s this?

Passenger: Well, I heard about the new restrictions against bringing liquids on board, so I froze my liquids before coming here. Now they’re solids! Swell, eh?

Screener: Sir, I don’t think we can let you on board with these, er, frozen liquids. We’re specifically not allowing liquids on board.

Passenger: But they aren’t liquids. They are solids. As solid as a rock! Get it?

Screener: Sir, don’t try to be funny. This is a matter of National Security. It’s possible these frozen liquids could contain dangerous substances.

Passenger: You mean like nitroglycerin?

Screener: Yes.

Passenger: What’s the freezing point of nitroglycerin?

Screener: Excuse me? I don’t know.

Passenger: It’s actually higher than water unless mixed with something like ethylene glycol dinitrate, about 45 °F. Pretty cool, huh?

Screener: Sir, how do you know so much about nitroglycerin?

Passenger: Read about it on the Internet last night as I was freezing my… er, packing my solids.

Screener: I see, well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to confiscate your solids. (Grabs the frozen items and dumps them in huge bin full of confiscated bottles of water, hair gels, and lip balms.)

Passenger: But isn’t it kinda risky to be mixing all those potentiallly dangerous liquids together like that, right here?

Screener: Sir, I’m just following orders.

Passenger: One last thing, is it okay for me to bring my knitting needles on board?

Screener: Sure thing, buddy. Now please move on. There are lots of passengers waiting behind you.

According to Google Maps, the distance is 1,710 miles and would take about 28 hours to complete without stops. Of the 12 steps from start to finish, the first five merely get you to I-90, a distance of less than two miles. Then at step six:

Bear right into the I-90 E entry ramp to Spokane – go 821 miles.

Step seven is equally momentous yet understated:

Take the I-90 E exit 456 to Sheridan – go 701 miles.

Step eight is more ordinary but failure to follow it will result in your entry into Iowa, something to be avoided on this itinerary:

Take the I-29 S exit 396A – go 182 miles.

And finally, the last four steps get you to the front door of your destination. Brilliant transportation planning.

Now, gasoline would cost roughly $200 to go the distance, and I don’t know about you but I can’t drive for 28 hours without stopping for the night, maybe twice, so add on another $150 for motel rooms. Then there’s food and drink, maybe another $50 (because you’ll be eating at crap restaurants that serve cheap food.) So, it looks like it may now cost up to $400 to drive there. After about a week, you’ll have been reminded of all the things that made you want to leave Omaha in the first place, so you’ll decided to drive back to Seattle. Ouch. There goes another $400.

Not so brilliant transportation planning.

We should have seen this coming. Gone are the days of carefree cross-country motoring. It’s cheaper to fly distances greater than a few hundred miles (for now). Passenger railroad service is laughable. What comes next? Has the great “not negotiable” American experiment in mobility-at-any-cost failed? My answer would be “yep, sure has”.

Update: In July 1994, we took a month-long road trip around America covering approximately 4,000 miles. The average retail price of a gallon of gas in July 1994 was $1.10, so we likely spent about $176 on gas during that trip. The average price of a gallon of gas this week is $2.95 which means the same trip taken today would cost us $472 just for gas. I’m not complaining about the price increase. I understand what’s going on. It’s a combination of supply and demand and oil company profit-taking (get it while the gettin’s good). I’m just saying that those amazing, long road trips behind the wheel of our own personal vehicle are going to make for some great stories to tell our grandchildren.

What’s it like? People, I really hated the GE product. It is tiny, and closes around you. I felt seriously claustrophobic. Then it shot bursts of air at me so hard it actually hurt. I had been told there would be “puffs of air”, but these were not, by any definition, puffs. “Puffs” make me think of cigar smoke. Or “Puff the magic dragon”. Puffs of wind. But these were hurricane strength blasts. Meanwhile the machine barks orders like a concentration camp commandant. Where did they get the voice? It speaks in a chilling metallic imperative borrowed from a really bad science fiction movie. In fact it was barely believable that adults would unleash this contraption on anyone.

I have to agree. I got “puffed” on a return trip to Seattle last November and had a similar reaction to Cameron’s. The woman in the security line behind me also got puffed and we chatted a bit afterward comparing our experiences. We both thought it extremely weird. Neither one of us had the dreaded “SSSS” on our boarding passes indicating to security personel that we were suspects. Both of us had purchased our tickets well in advance. Both of us were traveling round-trip. In fact, we both looked exactly like the 30-something knowledge-worker wage-slaves that we were. Weird.

Cameron does a good job of explaining the feeling of being inside one of these things. It’s like a sci-fi gas chamber. Your thoughts trend toward, “What happens if the machine detects something? Will robotic arms shoot out and immobilize me? Will a tranquilizer gas be released? Will a trapdoor open sending me sliding down to some underground holding cell?” It’s creepy.

A lot could be done to improve the experience. But in addition to making it more “people friendly” how about adding features that might get people to want to be puffed? How about turning it into an “air shower” that blows dust, germs and microbes off your body? Maybe it could use ionization to clean your skin? This would help make air travel be less of a burden on the immune system. If we’re going to have sci-fi security systems, why shouldn’t we have sci-fi personal care systems, too?

Leave them tips and ideas on their travel blog.

Our stay was made comfortable by a large bed and a large breakfast at the cozy Island Tyme (sic) Bed & Breakfast just outside the cute town of Langley. Our original plan was to bring our bikes and explore the back roads, but just before we left we nixed that idea in favor of a more laid back approach involving the car, light hiking, and a lot of eating and drinking. This was a good decision. We felt very relaxed and well fed upon returning home to our house of toddler terror. Our first day, we had lunch at the Dog House Tavern and dinner at the Edgecliff in Langley where the view was terrific. Lunch the next day at the Mad Crab in Coupeville was equally excellent and afforded a wall-to-wall view of Penn Cove, complete with bald eagles soaring over the water.

Two sites of note that we visited and hiked around were Fort Casey and Fort Ebey State Parks. The picture at left was taken while wondering around the labyrinthine bunkers at Fort Casey. The excellent views of Admiralty Inlet and the Strait of Juan de Fuca are not to be missed. There is a great deal of open space for playing, picnicking, whatever. We spotted a lame fawn on the beach that appearantly had been lost or abandoned. We alerted the park rangers when we circled back. The next day we hiked the bluff trail at Ft. Ebey State Park. Ft. Ebey was much bigger with a large network of hiking/biking trails, a very long sandy beach, and a really nice looking campground. Lots of kayakers and campers were out and about enjoying the perfect 70-degree day.

Instead of taking the ferry back to the mainland, we opted for the long drive north to Anacortes, followed by the mad dash south on I-5 to Seattle. This meant driving through Oak Harbor, which is about as wretched a place as one can image on this island. It’s home to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and all the detritus that a modern military community requires. I’m speaking of Wal-Mart, Costco, Target, and the golden arches, of course. Only five or so miles from Penn Cove, Oak Harbor hits you like a cement truck with the grim reality of what modern American ex-urban living is like. If it were not for the protected status of Ebey’s Landing, I’m sure that most of Whidbey Island would, by now, look like Oak Harbor.

The temperature in Harbin reaches forty below zero, both farenheit and centigrade, and stays below freezing nearly half the year. The city is actually further north than notoriously cold Vladivostok, Russia, just 300 miles away. So what does one do here every winter? Hold an outdoor festival, of course! Rather than suffer the cold, the residents of Harbin celebrate it, with an annual festival of snow and ice sculptures and competitions. The festival officially runs from January 5 through February 15, but often opens a week early and runs into March, since it’s usually still cold enough. This is the amazing sculpture made of snow greeting visitors to the snow festival in 2003.

The ice festival, a few miles away from the snow festival, is anything but dull and colorless. Crowds flocking to the entrance are greeted by dance music booming in the distance, as if at an outdoor pop concert. And bright neon colors shine everywhere, buried within huge blocks of ice forming structures as high as thirty meters, such as this huge structure beyond the entryway. You can just make out people standing atop its blue and red stairway.