Ok well people have asked me about my trip so I thought I should put the overview down in one place, so that I can at least copy from it in the future.

Trip started eventfully with the ride to the airport. We had all three kids in back, my shotgun and bags in the trunk. We were on the highway when I noticed that the car in front of us was on fire. There were flames shooting from the inside of the right rear tire, kicking up foot to two foot long fire spurts, and black smoke.

“That guy’s tire is on fire.” I dutifully exclaim using my natural human tendency to state the obvious.

So we pull up next to him. It was a gorgeous day and the guy was driving with his window down, his wife in the passenger seat. Both looked to be in their late fifties, early sixties. The car, a 20 year old Bonneville. So Pittsburgh.

My wife shouts out the window at the guy, “Hey! Your tire is on fire!”

His response?

“I know.”

I quickly accelerated past him. If he was gonna blow up I’d rather be in front of him rather than behind him entering the Fort Pitt Tunnel.

So we continued on to the airport. Now, I had made lots of lists so I wouldn’t forget anything. I was going to be in the middle of nowhere for 4 days where a Shell Gas Station would be the only place I could buy anything other than beer and food for 30 or 40 miles. So lists were made. I even drew little pictures. Two pairs of boots. Five pairs of underwear. Three pairs of jeans. Four pairs of socks. Two pairs of long underwear. I was paranoid I’d forget something. And sure enough I did. We were about a quarter mile from the airport, forty minutes from home through rush hour traffic, when I realized that I had completely forgotten about my soft case for my gun. (When you are driving about hunting you have to have your gun in a soft or hard-shell case not open and not loaded, so you generally use these soft cases that are the shape of a gun, with a zipper so you can easily pull it right out and load it up, rather than futzing with a clunky hard-shell case in the back.) I figured I’d be able to borrow one, and worst case buy one on the drive up from Minneapolis to Northern Wisconsin at a wal-mart or something for 10 bucks. Still it pissed me off. No matter how hard I plan, I always forget something.

Now we got to check in. This I was nervous about. An Arab with a beard, checking a shotgun. I trimmed my beard and hair down nice and neat so it wouldn’t be too bushy. Got to the airport, loaded the gun, and then ran in screaming Allahu Ackbar! Allahu Ackbar! right up to the Delta ticket counter….

Which would have been both funny and highly painful.

What did happen was I had to go to the special services line for the ticket agent, though it turns out I could have just done self-check in, but I was being cautious and I had a couple of hours till my flight so I figured I’d wait. Of course there was a flight to Paris ahead of me, and people were having trouble with their baggage. I’ve noticed this on a number of international flights…

See, you get a bag weight limit. I don’t know what it is. Lets say it’s 50 pounds per bag or something, I really don’t know. It’s higher than that I think. Anyway you get 3 bags, at 50 pounds each say. Now most, not all, but most people I’ve seen never have problems with this. They have 1 MAYBE 2 bags, and rarely any weight problems. They check their bags, show their passport, and head off to duty free. In front of me were not one, not two, but three DIFFERENT families sitting on the floor after being told that their bags were too heavy, repacking the bags, taking things out and putting them in carry ons, etc. Same thing I’ve seen countless times flying internationally. One time I saw a Kenyan guy, really nice guy though a bit hard to understand) trying to check a bag full of books. Nothing else. Books. He was sitting on the floor in Terminal 4 in Heathrow just pulling books out of this suitcase.

And here I was in Pittsburgh with our one daily flight to Paris and on the floor again were multiple Africa Africans with heavy bags.

Just a strange thing. Africans and heavy bags. I guess it’s not the worst racial stereotype in the world. Better than being expected to blow up every mode of transport you ride on.

Speaking of…So I get up to the counter to check my gun. I carefully phrase “I’d like to check in an unloaded firearm.” because I’d read it’s not smart to tell them “I have a gun.” Obviously it happens alot though because nobody is phased, and they knew from the case what it was. I sign a little orange card, saying it’s unloaded, etc, and then I open the case in front of them, and toss in the card, re-lock the case (with real padlocks, not TSA locks, they don’t like you to use TSA locks on guns. They actually want you to use real locks). Then I have to take it over to TSA myself.

Off I trudge all the way across the ticketing area, past a number of empty desks at the end for weird temporary airlines like ‘Sun Air’ and ‘Dice Express’ which I’m assuming are charter airlines to spring break or Vegas on Fridays or whatever, to a lone four and a half foot tall chubby woman missing half her teeth, and showing them in a nice toothless gappy grin. I make some pleasant small talk with her, and then unlock the case for her, after which she tells me to stand back.

Then she proceeds to molest my gun and gun case. She takes off the airline ticket sticker, you know, the thing that shows where to send the bag, as well as my tie on airline identification tag (you know, the thing you write your name and address on).

She takes the whole thing practically apart, feels every nook and cranny, then puts it back together and locks it back up, and proceeds to put it on the oversize ramp out into the baggage ether. I stop her saying “Shouldn’t we put the sticker thing back on?”

“Oops! That woulda been bad!” she laughs in her toothless laugh. We put the sticker and my id back on the case and she sends it down the ramp. She wishes me good luck with my hunting. I head off before I get myself into trouble.

Security was a breeze. I’ve traveled enough lately to know to just put everything in my bags, have my laptop and phone in their own bin, and basically go through as naked as possible rather than risk a ding on the metal detector. Through I went….grabbed a sub from a vendor for a quick dinner before I hit my flight, and off we went. The flights were a little delayed to Minneapolis, and I was flying in at the same time as a friend flying in from Boston, and we were both going to get picked up at the same time by our friend who lives out there, so I was concerned, but we were both delayed about the same amount.

Turns out that Minneapolis right now only has one working runway, so they land a plane, and take one off, land a plane, then take one off, and it’s a mess. They were redoing their second runway or something, and they fell behind and it’s been raining alot or something, and you can’t work on them when they’re wet.

Either way I had just NOT enough time to watch my movie. I had acquired a copy of GI JOE The Rise of Cobra that I had yet to see, which I would have in the theaters if I didn’t have you know….kids….and warcraft….Anyway so I get to watch all but like the last 10 minutes of that before I have to turn it off and land. Wouldn’t finish it till 4 days later in the airport waiting to come back home. I enjoyed it more than I expected. The negative early buzz, that apparently shifted to positive buzz, had colored it, and while there were things I didn’t like about it, there were other things that I think were pretty good. Definitely felt like GI Joe to me.

Oh and I should mention, that there is a special level in hell for people on airplanes who put their seats into a reclining position but who aren’t sleeping. Look i think it’s rude period on an obviously small and tight airplane (it was a DC-9) nobody has space, and reclining may be more comfortable for you, but it’s putting your head a foot from my face, and makes opening a laptop very difficult (I basically had it in a V against my stomach). if you need to do ti and you need to sleep….Well it’s a dick move, but fine. But this douchenozzle was reading a book. The lights were out in the cabin and there were five people with reading lights on. One was this guy, reclined back in my face, light on, another was in the aisle seat to my right, with the light at such an angle it was pointed right at my eyes. The third was right behind me. So I’m surrounded by 3/5ths of the lights on in the plane, totally lit up, trying to watch a movie all cramped up. I would have passed the dick move on and put my seat back, but the people behind me had a baby, and I wasn’t going to do that to them, cause I’m not an asshole (usually).

Anyway I got in fine, the landing was weird. It was really low clouds too, so it felt like we were descending through grey nothingness for about 20 minutes. At a certain point my brain always goes to the Twilight Zone and I start thinking “What if the ground has disappeared? What if they lost the ILS signal and radio contact, and we keep descending and descending and we never find land, because we’ve been moved into some sort of negative zone void…would the pilots tell us, what if we ran out of gas?”

Then the lights broke through the low clouds and I realized that we wouldn’t see any Dinosaurs through the windows. Ah well. Maybe next flight.

First thing I remembered upon landing was just how HUGE Minneapolis airport is. It’s one really really long concourse. They call it different letters and it has pieces that jut out from it but really it’s just a really really really long single concourse. As I was feeling it by the time I got to baggage claim i was worried about how much I’d be able to walk over the weekend, but I brushed those thoughts aside. I’d been at rest for hours, and then suddenly I’m carrying my carry ons and hoofing it across an airport. No biggie. I get my bag I checked, and wait by the over-sized area to get my gun. My friend from Boston walked up and just then the door opened and a grizzled viking passed me my gun. Yay!. We headed outside to grab a smoke (I don’t normally smoke, only on vacations) and wait for my friend to pick us up. A few minutes later we were all in his car, and on the way back to his house to crash for the night, and get an early start at 4am to head up to Clam Lake Wisconsin and get to hunting.

But that will have to wait for Part 2…