Filed under: Art, Fireworks, Music, N. Am. Welsh Choir, New Zealand, Travel
Clouds of steam issued out of the bathroom. The natural gas pipeline had been repaired.
Ah…
* * * * * * *
Breakfast was good. We packed up, were downstairs to wait with the rest of the group. Everyone was on the bus before our scheduled departure time – impressive!
What was also impressive was the way Helen, our guide, handled questions which would have made me throw things at people. Best example that morning was “Does the sun rise in the west here?”
Sheesh.
* * * * * * *
We headed mostly south, towards the Waitomo Glowworm Caves. It was pretty country, like much of what we saw of New Zealand: beautiful rolling hills, lush, green, with dairy, sheep, and deer farms. To be honest, it reminded me of parts of Wales, or parts of the Ozarks. It took about three hours for us to get to the caves.
The caves themselves are a significant tourist attraction, though the whole experience wasn’t anything as horrid as many such places I’ve been. This is in part due to the delicate ecological condition of the caves, and the need to control traffic through them (as well as the impact which tourists have on the area around the caves.) The structures for bathrooms, and ticketing, and cafes, and the inevitable gift shop are all under a large clear double membrane which has air forced into the sandwich. It looks like a cross between a geodesic dome and bubble-wrap.
But it kept us dry (it had been raining most of the drive) and was a bit warmer than just being in the open. We got our tickets, went down into the caves as a group.
Nice caves, but nothing spectacular, part of a Karst plane such as we have here. Indeed, we have a cave on our own property which isn’t a whole lot smaller.
It was cool when the choir all gathered around and sang in the ‘cathedral’ of the cave. Excellent acoustics.
And then there were the glowworms . . .
* * * * * * *
These glowworms anchor themselves to parts of the ceiling of the cave, then let down long silk snares. The worm (a larval stage) then feeds off of mosquitos and other small flying insects which get caught in the snares when they’re attracted to the light of the worm.
When you turn off other light sources, the ceiling filled with glowworms looks remarkably like the sky filled with stars.
It’s very cool.
* * * * * * *
After the choir swept through the gift shop on the way out, we made our way to Otorohanga, a small town nearby. We took a break there for lunch (and shopping! Mustn’t forget the shopping! Good lord, did the members of the choir know how to support the tourist industry!)
I think it was the first time I tried the local version of fast-food: a pie. Meaning a small meat pie. Usually some combination of beef, chicken, lamb, but occasionally other varieties are available (and noted on the menu), combined with a thick sauce/gravy which might include potato or onion. All backed into a small round pie crust (about 3 or 4″ diameter, typically.) I had these a number of times on the trip, and I don’t think I ever had one which wasn’t extremely tasty.
* * * * * * *
As I noted on my Facebook page that day:
Safety quote from the morning paper: “When igniting a roman candle held between the buttocks, remember to use your free hand to protect the family jewels.”
Yeah, Guy Fawkes Day was coming. The Kiwis seem to have their own home-grown rednecks like the ones I grew up with.
* * * * * * *
We continued on to Rotorua, enjoying more of the landscape as we crossed the island heading east. After a brief tour around the city in our bus, we were deposited at the hotel to sort out rooms and get settled for a bit before our evening festivities.
From the tour itinerary:
Depart by coach to Te Puia, Maori Institute for your Maori dinner experience. Tonight you will enjoy an in depth experience of the customs and traditions of the Maori. The evening will begin with a traditional powhiri or Maori welcoming ceremony, next a warrior’s challenge and then a full kapa haka or Maori performing arts concert. Dinner tonight will be a modern version of the traditional Maori style of cooking, in a hangi pit where kai (food)– is steam-cooked by hot rocks in the earth. Following dessert, see the world famous Pohutu geyser illuminated against the night sky, while enjoying a hot drink. Transfer back to the hotel following your experience.
Actually, that’s not a bad description of what actually happened. Te Puia was pretty cool, all in all, though once again there was a touristy element to the whole thing. Seeing the haka is always fun, and the performers clearly enjoyed playing it to the hilt.
The geyser was cool. Er, you know what I mean. We sat on rock ledges overlooking the geyser, which were toasty warm from the geothermal vents, while the performers from Te Puia wrapped up the evening’s show. Well, they tried to, though the choir had to return the favor of song with a couple of pieces from their repretoire. It was enjoyed by all.
The bus came and fetched us, took us back to the hotel to crash.
Jim Downey
After a bracing shower (there was still no hot water at the hotel) Martha and I went downstairs for breakfast.
It was touch crazy. Crowded, hectic, clusters of people swarming around the two buffets – one hot, one cold. But the food was plentiful, and good, and typical of what we found at all our hotels, so I’ll describe it here.
The hot buffet included bacon (this time American style, other times occasionally British), scrambled eggs, fried mushrooms, hot tomato halves, baked beans, and breakfast sausages. These last looked a little like the British counterparts, which are nasty, pasty things – but they turned out to be chicken sausages with a a fair amount of spice and flavor. There was also pancakes, rice, miso soup.
The cold buffet had different cereals, cold cuts of meat and cheese, yogurt, and plenty of sliced/chopped fruit. There was also a selection of different breads (and a toaster) as well as various rolls and pastries. And different juices – including kiwi fruit juice. (What we call kiwis the Kiwis call “kiwi fruit” – which makes sense and saves on confusion.)
We dove into the buzzing clouds, got our food, and escaped to the quiet of a table on the periphery.
* * * * * * *
We heard back from our bank. They had removed the block on our debit cards, said that we should have notified them that we were going to be traveling to New Zealand, which they consider a “fraud haven”. Who knew?
Anyway, we had access to our money.
* * * * * * *
Martha had a rehearsal that morning. ML and I went to the Auckland Domain, where the Auckland War Memorial Museum is located. It was wonderful. But don’t take my word for it: explore their site, and see what I mean. We spent the whole morning there, catching a taxi back to our hotel just as the choir practice ended.
* * * * * * *
I had made arrangements to meet some people involved in the shooting sports in New Zealand, for a series of articles for Guns.com. The first of these was in an outer suburb of Auckland. My contact had told me to catch the 1:30 ferry to Half Moon Bay, where she would meet us.
So I asked Helen (our guide) where we’d go to catch said ferry. At first she just looked at me in shock. “Half Moon Bay? Why would you want to go there? It’s nothing but a suburb. There’s nothing there.”
Of course, after explaining that we were meeting some people there, she was happy to provide full information. The ferry docked just down the hill from our hotel. Martha and I made it in plenty of time, and enjoyed the 40 minute trip up the coast.
* * * * * * *
I won’t go into a lot of detail about what we learned about the shooting sports – that’ll be covered in the articles on Guns.com, which I will link here once they’re published – but I would like to share some observations from that afternoon and evening.
I mentioned in the first entry about this trip that I had expected New Zealand to be more like the UK than it actually is. Getting together with some locals was a quick way to find out how much the Kiwis are more like folks in the US. Specifically, how they’re more like most Midwesterners I’ve known. It’s always dangerous to make a generalization based on just a limited pool of experience, but this perception held true through our whole trip.
We were met at the dock by Debbie and her husband Andy. They’re in their 40s, solidly middle class. They have a nice suburban home on a cul-de-sac like you’d find just about anywhere in the States, though the yard is perhaps a bit smaller than we’re used to. She teaches their equivalent of High School, he has a factory job and runs a small side-line business doing gunsmithing. Two cars, no kids, a couple of friendly cats.
They showed us around, Andy taking some pride with his shop (clearly a working space, not just for show – and a decent selection of milling tools and other equipment I wouldn’t mind having). He opened his safe, we talked guns, they got things ready to go out to their shooting club. It was, to be honest, exactly the sort of conversation I could have had with about half the people I know here in the US.
We loaded up the car, drove out to the club, some 20 minutes further out of town.
* * * * * * *
I’m not one for ‘formal’ shooting ranges. I prefer the very informal shooting I can do on my own, or with my wife or a friend, on our property south of Columbia. I said this to Debs and Andy. They said they wished they could do the same, but this is one way that shooting sports differs between the US and NZ – any kind of pistol shooting (and most long gun shooting which isn’t hunting) has to be done at a government licensed club.
That said, their club, while meeting all the required safety and environmental regulations, wasn’t like some spotless formal facility I’ve seen in Europe. It was a little ramshackle in a very friendly and inviting way. Non-intimidating.
So were the other people we met there. Most of them were busy getting things set up for hosting a competition the next day. Again, they were just middle-class folks, doing the necessary volunteer work on their time off, so that everyone in the club could enjoy shooting that weekend.
After they introduced us and shown us the place, we went to one of the shooting areas so they could check some tweaks to one of their competition guns. Martha and I got hearing protection from a box available for visitors, Debs and Andy put their own on out of their range bags. A magazine or two of ammo satisfied them that the minor gunsmithing work was good, then they offered to let me shoot one of their guns. It was no big deal.
I felt right at home.
* * * * * * *
We went back to their place, chatted while Andy grilled some steaks and brats as we sat out on their patio. Another friend of theirs, Chris, who was originally from South Africa, joined us. He’d lived in the US for a while, where he had gone through apprenticeship as a gunsmith. He’d moved to NZ a few years back, and was as friendly and out-going as Andy and Debs.
Dinner was good, as was the company and discussion. We didn’t have anything alcoholic to drink, since after dinner they took us over to another shooting club for a .22 rifle meet.
* * * * * * *
This was a little more formal, both in terms of the facility and in how the club operates. The facility is actually government owned (local government), and rented out to several different shooting clubs which use it on different nights of the week. Because of this, they have a specific set of procedures that they go over as club business and safety protocols, but it wasn’t anything more onerous than what you’d find at most formal ranges here in the US.
Again, the others we met there were friendly and welcoming. We weren’t the only ‘newcomers’ there that evening, and I had the feeling that they were very used to having visitors and helping them get involved in shooting. At several junctures different people asked if I wanted to shoot any of the club’s .22s.
After about 90 minutes, we headed back to Debbie & Andy’s place.
* * * * * * *
They got all the guns and gear put away. We sat and had some dessert, chatted a while longer. Andy showed us some funny videos he’d seen online – stuff which I have since seen referenced by others here in the US.
Then, since they had a competition to run the next day, and we had an early departure and then a full day of travel, they drove us back to our hotel. It was about 10:00 when they dropped us off, wishing us well on the rest of our tour. I felt like I had made new friends who I’d never see again.
Jim Downey
Aotearoa, the Maori name for New Zealand, is usually translated as “the land of the long white cloud”. How this fits in with the history/discovery/creation myth depends on who you ask.
What didn’t depend on who you ask was the beauty of the place. Well, OK, I’m sure that there are some people who would claim that it isn’t beautiful, but none of us on the tour were of that opinion.
* * * * * * *
The good news was that we were staying at the Pullman Auckland, a 5-star hotel right downtown, adjacent to Albert Park and the University of Auckland campus. This put us just up the (*very*) steep hill from the port area.
The bad news was that the hotel didn’t have hot water.
Oh, it wasn’t their fault – most of the Auckland area was suffering from a pipeline break which supplies New Zealand with natural gas from a large production facility offshore. There was plenty of electricity – half of the country is powered by hydro-electric, most of the rest using coal and renewable power generation – but the most common way for large hotels and most businesses (as well as a lot of private residences) to make hot water is using natural gas. Pretty much every hotel in the northern half of the country was without hot water.
So, cold water clean-up after flying for 13 hours. Joy.
* * * * * * *
I asked at the desk where the closest ATM was. The clerk looked at me like I was an idiot. “Anywhere downtown. They’re everywhere.”
Martha and I decided to take a stroll that way. We needed to get cash, and stretching our legs a bit after so much sitting was a good idea.
Where “downtown” was wasn’t a question. You could see it easily from the hill where the hotel was. Tall office buildings, the Sky Tower – all obvious.
Cross the street at the corner, punching the button for the signal. All pretty normal, a slight tonal variation on the audio cues that I was used to, but not much different than anything you’d find at such signals around the world. Oncoming pedestrian traffic tended to walk to the left, in keeping with driving habits. Students, mostly, looking like students anywhere.
But just a few paces into the park you knew you were no longer in Kansas. Or Missouri.
It was the trees.
* * * * * * *
We didn’t have a lot of time – there was a ‘welcome lunch’ scheduled for our group in the hotel restaurant. But given that there were ATMs ‘everywhere’ we thought a quick excursion into the city center would be OK.
And there were ATMs everywhere. Seriously, just one block in from the park, and you could see about a dozen of the things up and down the streets. All kinds of different flavors and colors – just pick one, and we’d be set.
Except we weren’t. The first machine wouldn’t recognize either of our debit cards (my wife and I maintain separate checking accounts, but both at the same bank). Nor would the second and all subsequent machines. Hmm.
Martha headed back to the hotel – it was more important that she be there for the luncheon, since she was part of the choir. I decided to try more flavors of machines, even popped into a bank branch to ask whether where was some trick to using the machines or a special kind of debit card I needed to have. Nothing worked, and I got the same kind of look the hotel desk clerk had given me.
Ah, well, I’m used to feeling like an idiot when traveling. Even at other times.
I gave up, went back to the hotel.
* * * * * * *
It was a good lunch. Substantial and quite tasty, though the chef apologized to our group for some limitations imposed by the hot-water issue.
We did the usual “introductions all around” thing. Then our guide (Helen) reminded us of our bus-tour of the city that afternoon.
I told Martha of my failure with the ATMs. Chatted with a friend on the tour who was willing to loan us some NZ$ until we could resolve things, as well as grant us use of her laptop so we could send a secure email to our local bank to see what the problem was. Thanks, ML – as always, you’re a lifesaver.
* * * * * * *
Auckland is NZ’s largest city, by far. Over 30% of the country’s population lives there and in the surrounding area. It’s on a volcanic field, has a large port, is beautiful almost wherever you look, and there’s a whole lot more you can find out about it on Wikipedia.
Our tour took us to most of the highlights. We walked through the harbor, spent time in the Auckland Domain (the large public park), saw where this and that landmark was, and generally got a sense of the layout of the city and possible sites to explore further on our own.
Helen was informative, active, and considerate – all traits which made her an exceptional guide for our entire time in New Zealand.
* * * * * * *
Dinner that evening was somewhat less elegant than lunch had been. Martha, ML, and I wandered back into the nearby city center, which caters largely to the student population. We found a grungy takeaway food court downstairs from street level – mostly of this, that, or the other variety fast food. But all of it local, even though more than a little greasy-spoon. I had some curry & rice, Martha stuck with ice cream (New Zealand has a very significant dairy industry, and produces a lot of high-quality ice-cream) and ML had some Dim Sum, as I recall.
It was tasty, simple food. And I didn’t even have to be thankful my hepatitis vaccine was still good.
Jim Downey
I’ve been thinking a lot about clouds recently.
This sort of thing usually happens from a change of perspective. Like looking at clouds from above, while flying somewhere.
* * * * * * *
The St. Louis airport is still being rebuilt following the tornado damage earlier this year.
I remember the airport from when it was still quite new, and much smaller. And when it was still a major hub. For much of my time here in mid-Missouri it was the default airport for us – closer than the KC one, plugged into the air transport system completely enough that you could easily get a flight from there to almost anywhere.
We parked the car in one of the distant lots, caught the shuttle to our terminal. Checked in, sent our bags for questioning, went downstairs to get ourselves through security.
The security gate was a mess. Still undergoing basic construction. The agent who took my documents apologized. I took off my sweatshirt and vest, getting ready for whatever flavor of exam I needed to go through. The agent took one look at the t-shirt I was wearing and cracked up, had to point it out to the other agent nearby. It said:
“The ONLY thing we have to fear
is FEAR itself…
…and spiders.”
Everyone laughed. My wife said, loudly to all watching, “yeah, he’s been known to use firearms to deal with spiders.”
I cringed, waited for a trap door to open beneath my feet.
Everyone else just laughed again.
* * * * * * *
We got to LA a day early. Initially a mistake, thanks to the info provided by the company organizing our tour, but one we decided to treat as fortuitous, as it meant a day to relax and break up what otherwise would be a very long day of travel.
So, we got a hotel room not too far from the airport, and did just that – relaxed. Walked through the neighborhood. Had some great gyros at a little mom & pop place, or rather I should say a mamá y papá place, since the folks who ran it were Hispanic. There was Sriracha sauce instead of ketchup on the counters. Classic.
* * * * * * *
Our flight for New Zealand left at midnight. As we waited at the gate through the course of the day, more and more members of the Choir drifted in. At some point we went from being a minority to being “the group.”
It was a long flight, some 13 hours, to Auckland. We arrived there about 10:00 AM two days after we left. Crossing the international date line is weird.
* * * * * * *
We weren’t the entirety of Choir and traveling companions, but we were the bulk of it. Our guide met us at the airport, had a bus waiting.
New Zealand drives on the left. I think this helped to kick my mind into expecting it to be like England or Wales. But it isn’t – culturally, it’s a lot more like the US. I found this a little hard to get used to, at first.
It was still late October, but it was a warm spring day. The flowers around the airport were glorious. The sky was a brilliant blue. And there were clouds. Clouds, easy to define at a distance, with clear beginnings and ends.
We went to the hotel, got into our room.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Blade Runner, movies, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Travel
As friends and long-term readers know, I’m a big fan of Blade Runner. This independent homage to the movie is brilliant:
Enjoy. I hope to have the first installment of stories from our NZ trip here later today.
Jim Downey
First they came for the air travelers,
and I didn’t speak out because I almost never fly*.
Then they came for the train riders,
and I didn’t speak out because I don’t ride the train.
Then they came for the Greyhound riders,
and I didn’t speak out because I don’t ride the bus.
Then the came for the truck drivers,
and I didn’t speak out because I don’t drive a truck.
Then they came for me
and by then no one cared about liberty.
Jim Downey
*of course, tomorrow I am, and then again on Tuesday. So I’ll probably regret this. Which says a lot, right there.
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Failure, Feedback, Gardening, Hospice, Marketing, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Society, Travel
A good friend was visiting last weekend. We see each other fairly often, communicate regularly. But there are things best discussed in person.
“How’s your mom doing?”
“Not bad. I think we’re getting to the point where we need to have that conversation about her driving.”
“Ah. That’s a hard one.”
“Yeah. But my sister largely drives her everywhere as it is, anyway. So that will make it easier.”
* * * * * * *
I mentioned a week ago that I was surprised that Her Final Year hasn’t done better.
Well, I had been waiting for a couple of additional pieces to appear in different publications in the hopes that would spur awareness of the book, as well as sales. One of those being my college alumni magazine. Yesterday I saw that they had posted the Fall 2011 issue as a .pdf on their website, so I took a look.
It’s a blurb, not a review. You can find it at the bottom of page 39, if you want. Next to another book blurb, and one of about a dozen in this issue. My fellow alumni are intelligent, accomplished people.
* * * * * * *
After discovering that, I went out to pick tomatoes from my garden. The very wet summer we had meant that there was a big delay in a bunch of the tomato plants blooming and setting fruit. But I am lucky, since many people I know have had a horrible year for tomatoes, while mine were just delayed.
I was able to pick about 25 pounds of tomatoes, a nice mix of Lemon Boy and Brandywine and Black Prince and Better Boy. Most look great, have a wonderful taste. We had some with BLTs last night for dinner, and I made up two quarts of sauce from the ones with slight blemishes. I’ll probably go ahead and can or sauce the rest in the next day or two.
But I didn’t get to picking them for about two hours, because first I had to completely re-do the netting around the garden (about 40×50). Deer had gotten in, then tore the hell out of everything getting out.
Yeah, they munched on the tomato plants, and that was annoying. But they also ate the tops out of my habanero plants. Well, not all of them. Just the ones which had done the best.
See, as bad as the summer was on tomatoes, it was worse on the habaneros. They just started setting fruit a couple of weeks ago. And it was a race to see whether any of the pods ripened fully before I leave for New Zealand.
Now I doubt whether any of the pods will ripen. Oh, the deer stayed away from the fruit. But with the bulk of the leaves eaten out of the top, I don’t know whether they can ripen. We’ll see.
* * * * * * *
A dear friend used to always say “Live as if you were going to die tomorrow. Plan as if you will live forever.”
She passed away over 20 years ago from breast cancer.
* * * * * * *
“Still, once you tell her that she has to stop driving, things change.”
“I know.” He looked at me. “I got copies of your book for all four of my siblings. Told them to read it.”
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you – I don’t think any of them have really thought through how this is likely to go with Mom.”
“Every experience is different.”
“Yeah, but at least having *some* idea of what to plan for, what to watch for, will help.”
Jim Downey
*from this. Cross posted to the HFY blog.
It’s probably a mistake for me to talk about the TSA a bit more than a month before I actually have to fly somewhere, but such are the risks we take.
Via BoingBoing, this wonderful (and telling) headline: TSA to stop groping children
The problem is, it isn’t exactly true. What’s actually going to happen is that the TSA is ‘adjusting’ some of their procedures for children under 12. From the actual article cited by BB:
In the next few months, the TSA will implement new security procedures for fliers under 12, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Senate. They can still get patted down, although it will be by a different method, and they no longer have to remove their shoes. Even if they have velcro straps and are super easy to take on and off anyway.
Until we see the actual details of the new procedures, it’s impossible to characterize exactly *what* the TSA will be doing with children. And if you’re over 12? Sorry, looks like you’ll still be subject to the usual “enhanced pat-down” we’ve all come to know and love. And if the complete benefit is that some children won’t have to remove their shoes, then sorry, this is little more than a sop tossed to mollify parents.
This is like the old joke of a food maker advertising that their product is now “3% less radioactive!” – it doesn’t really inspire confidence.
But that’s OK, because the TSA has our best interests at heart, and we can trust them not just to respect our civil liberties, but to protect us, right?
Sure:
Airport Security Officers And Cops Snared In Multistate Oxycodone Ring, U.S. Attorney Says
Federal agents have broken up a drug ring that paid police and airport security officers to protect the illegal shipment from Florida to Connecticut of enormous quantities of highly addictive pain medication, authorities said Tuesday.
Three federal Transportation Security Administration officers, two police officers and 13 drug dealers in Florida, New York and Connecticut were charged with working for the ring that, in some weeks, dumped tens of thousands of oxycodone pills in the Waterbury area, according to a variety of federal and local police agencies involved in the investigation.
No, really – they have only your best interests at heart.
Jim Downey
From Chapter 3 of Communion of Dreams:
The image of Seth disappeared, to be replaced by what seemed to be a miniature landscape of hills, a road, a small river, and a bridge. On one of the hills appeared a small person, looking around as though trying to find something. Ling commenced to play with the controls on the side of the projector. Jon didn’t recognize the game, looked to Klee.
The German smiled. In English he said, “No, it’s probably not a game you’ve ever played. It’s a little something Seth and I came up with to help her learn the fundamentals of game theory. In this first level, she has to learn how to communicate with the figure, and agree on a meeting place. The obvious choice is dictated by the terrain features: where the road crosses the river, there is a bridge. That is a unique point in the landscape, and hence a good starting point to establish a reference. The game goes on to introduce other concepts,using a variety of terrain features, multiple players, tacit and explicit communication, cooperation, and competition. She’s quite good at it, and no matter which variables the machine uses, Ling sees the essential key to each scenario quickly. Soon she’ll have mastered the principles of a zero-sum game, and we’ll move on to other lessons.”
* * * * * * *
Via BoingBoing:
‘Sleepy market town’ surrounded by ring of car cameras
Despite low levels of crime, police are installing a network of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras around historic Royston, Herts.
Police claim the devices will help catch criminals as Royston lies close to the borders of three counties and is the juncture of several main roads.
However, opponents claim the scheme is “grossly disproportionate”, an invasion of residents’ privacy and an unlawful expansion of Britain’s Big Brother state.
The system records the number plates of all vehicles passing through the cameras, logging their details in national database for up to five years.
* * * * * * *
It’s not the first time it’s been done, of course, though this is a somewhat larger scale. And after all, why should we worry? The use of surveillance cameras and other scanners is popular. It makes people feel safer. And if you aren’t doing anything wrong, why should you care?
Control the rules, and you control the game. See you at the crossroads.
Jim Downey
only outlaws will have toy plastic hammers:
We have yet another horrific encounter with TSA. This time the incident occurred in Romulus, Michigan where a family was going to Disneyland and found two denizens waiting from them at the airport from the Unhappiest Place on Earth. Dr. David Mandy was walking his 29-year-old severely mentally disabled son through security when two agents spotted him.
Drew [had] difficulty understanding orders to place his feet on the yellow shoe line and follow the TSA agents’ orders. When Dr. Mandy tried to explain his son was severely mentally disabled the TSA agents told him to back off and that they would handle the matter. They were concerned with his adult diaper and kept instructing him to rub his hand up the front and back of his pants. They then turned their attention to a small plastic toy hammer and ball that Drew carries for comfort. As with children, Drew clings to the toys for a sense of security and has had the toys for years. One agent tapped it on the wall and reportedly said “See, it’s hard. It could be used as a weapon.”
At this point, it’s almost impossible to parody the TSA’s Security Theater.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 
