en route

[bedlamsbard]

So I am in an airport! I kind of despise airports because I kind of despise flying, and also I feel like I've spent a not-insignificant portion of my life in planes and airports. (I have been flying since I was a year old, and when I was younger I traveled internationally a lot. Over the past seven years I've done a lot of domestic flying -- going to school 2000 miles from home helped with that, obvs.) I am in Sea-Tac, camped out by an outlet and a window on my new baby computer, which is much nicer than I thought it would be. I took both laptops through security, and one of the security guys was like, "Two laptops? You must be very smart! I can only handle one!"

(I am very tired, so things that are actually not funny sort of seem funny at the moment. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll get more tired over the next twenty-four hours.)

Also in airport security they PATTED DOWN MY HAIR, which is a first for me. There was nothing funny going on with my hair! It was just in two braids, which is my standard travel hair because I can lean back with it. (Ladies with long hair, how do you do your hair when you travel? When my hair was shorter I used to just leave it down, but mostly I put it in two braids (plaits?). When it's in a bun or a ponytail I can't lean back, which is pretty uncomfortable in an airplane, and my hair's down to mid-back right now, so leaving it down isn't an option. I could do it in one braid or a side braid, but that tends to get messy. I bet a crown braid might be good, if I could do one that didn't give me a headache or actually looked good.) I guess they were worried that my hair might be FULL OF SECRETS. *cracks up*

Anyway! I am flying SEA-DFW, then DFW-LHR, where if everything works out I will be picked up by the IWSP shuttle that goes to Leicester, and then hopefully I will be steered in the proper direction of my res hall or whatever they're called in England. And then I get to find food and bedding, oh joy. I will update from England!

...I was about to say that Sea-Tac's wifi was much improved from the last time I was here, but it just went down for me. *sigh* Oooh, it's back! And the previous plane is disembarking. Though I'm still here for a while.

So...how 'bout that Hobbit trailer, huh? And its FIVE POSSIBLE ENDINGS? Why is it not December 14, yet? Though I will still be in England on December 14.

ETA: Also I stayed overnight at a hotel in SeaTac last night (it's a city as well as an airport, I don't even know, people) with my parents, and maybe slept three hours? Not because I had to get up super-early, because my dad SNORES. And I'm a light sleeper. So the benefit of sharing a room with my parents is that by six-thirty I'm up and going, "OKAY TAKE ME TO THE AIRPORT, IF I GET ON THE PLANE I CAN SLEEP."

Comments

[sara]

When I was getting married, I had very long hair, and my hairdresser had done a test run on the updo (quite involved, multiple braids to match the roses on my dress -- I had a LOT of hair) and left it up so I could show it off that evening. I went out to pick C. up at the airport, and this was back when you could still go through the metal detector and meet people at the gate.

Except that I couldn't go through the metal detector, because there were so many pins in my hair that I set it off. *GRIN*

Fortunately it was two ladies with a good sense of humor, one of whom had elaborate cornrows, and after we'd all had a good giggle about it they let me through.

[bedlamsbard]

Oh, man. (I remember flying in those days! Because I was flying in those days, even though I was tiny. Good times, man, good times.) There is a reason I am afraid to wear pins in my hair when I fly. Usually I also wear a bra without an underwire for the same reason, but this time I forgot. No problem, though.

[cursor_mundi]

I went through security last year in a wrap-around shirt, which had to be knotted closed. TSA patted down the knot and tugged at it to check it was real -- I had to hastily inform them that it was load-bearing and that I objected to displaying my bra to the other travelers -- because, they said, the scanner could not see through the knot. More likely they couldn't identify your hair ties, or there's a tab of metal in the elastic, and their default protocol is "pat down everything we cannot see through that has a bit of metal on it." (I had a hair tie in my back pocket once that I'd forgotten about, and they patted my ass as a result.)

All of which is to say: safe travels, and enjoy graduate school!

[aella_irene]

When going through the security at the entrance to Istanbul Airport last week, I had to open my bag to demonstrate that these were in fact tiles painted with apparently-metallic paint.

Luckily, I checked that bag before we went through actual security.

[bedlamsbard]

But my hair ties are the non-metal-bit kind! *shakes head* It was very strange. I mean, the only difference of me going through this time as opposed to all the other times was that I forgot to wear a bra without an underwire and instead wore one with, but I wasn't exactly wearing my bra in my hair. OH, the TSA.

Thank you!

[darklyndsea]

I usually end up going through airport security with a braid, just because it's my standard I'm-too-lazy-to-do-anything-with-my-hair style. Amish braids (or interlaced braids, which are almost the same but involve french braiding so I don't do them) are good for planes because you can do them without any pins and they're flat enough that you can lean back with them.

Apparently, when they pat down your hair they're looking for drugs, not weapons or extra bottles of liquid, which is what I thought they were looking for when I first heard about hair pat-downs.

[bedlamsbard]

See, I had no pins! And my elastics didn't have any metal in them. It was just two plain braids, one behind each ear, not pinned up or anything. Pretty much the only thing I could have hid in there was a garrote. Which I hadn't hid in there, obvs. It's the same hair I always travel in!

[cofax7]

Travel safe! Good luck on the new adventure!

[bedlamsbard]

Thank you!