Where in the world am I today?: Toronto to Miami to St. Thomas

Wanted to find the right image to describe my day today and stumbled across this architectural drawing of a baggage carousel… What does this have to do with my day today? Well after arriving in Toronto on a Red-Eye from Vancouver I had to drag myself from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3 then pick up my luggage from a carousel similar to the one in the drawing and walk it through customs and immigration for the United States before boarding my flight to Miami…

Much like the description of my day getting through YVR on my way to the Monarch of the Seas recently, I got stuck waiting in at the connecting luggage carousel for well over an hour waiting, waiting, waiting for my luggage to not show up… When I went to the American Airlines desk to ask what my best course of action was going to be they said that I really did need to go through Immigration immediately if I was going to catch the flight to Miami, so I had to abandon any hope of getting my luggage on the flight and simply make a B-Line to the departure gate…

Oh… I should also mention that on my way to the gate I needed to check my hat box that I’ve carried as hand luggage for as long as I can remember because the increased restrictions on what can be carried as hand luggage is really being enforced and there’s no messing around with the TSA guys when you get to security… As it was it was touch and go as to whether I could bring my camera bag/back pack with me too as it was considered a bit too big…

On days like today I remember that sometimes the job (and after all Wednesday’s are traditionally about talking about job opportunities) is more about the challenges of traveling than about the actual performance. Heck… The shows, that’s the fun part, but red-eye flights, staring at baggage carousels while praying to the luggage gods, making sure that Immigration inspectors have no call to pull you aside, getting patted down in Airport Security… That’s what I’m getting paid for…

In the back of my mind I’m wondering how long it’s going to be before we start to see full body scanners the likes of the ones seen in the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger film ‘Total Recall’ showing up in Airports… The things that were Science Fiction 20 years ago becoming the reality that we’ll soon be living in, much like the way flip style cel phones sort of resemble the original Star Trek communicators… If it would speed up travel days like today then quite frankly I’m all for it…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 12:01 am and is filed under Job Opportunities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.