yesterday we flew home from minneapolis to philadelphia. between when we flew to minnesota on friday and our return on monday, the powers-that-be upgraded the security alert to an "orange" level on that be-afraid-be-very-afraid terrorism alert scale.
despite all the excitement on cnn about the new color, there was no noticeable difference at the airport aside an occasional recording advising travelers that we were now at "orange" alert. the recording ran every 20 minutes but did nothing to explain what, if anything, we were supposed to do differently. in fact, my wife and i did nothing differently and it went fine. we got through security no slower than before the alert level was raised (in fact, a little faster. but i think that was due to the fact that the minneapolis security people seemed to have their act together more than their colleagues in philly) even though i had no valid photo i.d. with me.
while in line for security i noticed that my driver's license had expired three weeks earlier on my birthday. i should note at this point that not noticing that your license is expired for three weeks is not stupid. why would i ever bother to read my own driver's license? i'm a busy guy, what with my blogging and all. the security line, however, was boring enough so that i finally had a chance to catch up on my driver's license reading. thus i noticed the date in the upper right hand corner. after i read the date, i imagined myself being pulled out of the security line and started mentally cataloguing all of the stuff written in arabic that i happened to be carrying on my bag. would they be able to tell the difference between simple conjugation exercises and love letters to osama?
but in fact, there was no need for concern. the security people looked at my license and let me through without comment. no one at the airport seemed any more vigilant than before, including the people behind the x-ray machines.
