Well, the terminal isn't actually completed yet; a few more long months of tweaks and the pull of some levers and the rotation of some gears and the thing will be ready for public consumption by 2012.
Just in time for systemically higher oil prices.
Airplane travel is one area where the smart grid, smart phones, plug-in hybridization, personal windmills and rooftop solar PV systems will mean precisely dick. Getting a plane up in the air only ever came about due the introduction of a suitably powerful engine a century ago -- nothing in the ensuing eleven decades has decreased the reliance of air travel on petroleum. Nothing. It won't take off using batteries and solar cells. Shit...it probably wouldn't even come close to staying aloft on batteries and solar cells, assuming we could even build a hybrid plane using kerosene to take off and renewables for everything else. We'll have to drill in 7,000 feet of Gulf of Mexican water and then through another 14,000 feet of rock to get the future oil needed to power these aircraft -- in my little opinion, it's not going to be cheap, yet we built out a fantabulous new terminal designed to handle dozens of additional daily flights under the assumption of a cheap energy future ad infinitium.
I dropped off a passenger this afternoon. Come 2025 we might get light rail out to the airport, but I'm not holding my breath. If you're gonna fly from Sacramento you had better be prepared to drive, too. I'm imminently pleased that I did not have to fly today. I'm not mentally prepared for the back-of-the hand security maneuvers and the dumping out of all but 3 ounces of insulin because I didn't happen to pack my prescription label. No, not today.
I would like to build the following aluminum plate for my next stroll through the Sacramento airport x-ray device:
I wonder if it would even garner attention. It most certainly couldn't be construed as "domestic terrorism," you think? That's the problem with airport security -- no sense of humor. It's not like I'm making any threats...
I'm hardly joking about bombs or other such shit. I just want them to know what I really think of their security procedures, because to actually vocalize my thoughts would cause alarms to go off and large men with guns to appear. I don't feel particularly safer knowing the five year old boy in front of me was frisked for undergarment explosives or that his shoes' lasts were examined for Semtex-1A. I do feel particularly safer knowing that I and a few dozen others will ignore the seat belt sign (much to the consternation of the flight attendants and the FAA) and dogpile any would-be terrorist before he'd have his opportunity to light his wares or fill the fuselage with lethal gas.
Most decidedly a he. And, most decidedly a young he. And, most decidedly a swarthy young he. It is for our failures to openly practice such profiling as a viable means of terror enforcement, at least as it pertains to the largely-symbolic act of airport security, that I offer my contempt. I do believe its intention is just to make white people feel safe. Every time the news reports on an individual who agrees with such measures it is always either an old white woman or a middle-aged white woman. "I feel safer knowing the terrorists are now leaving their bombs at home" they say.
Remember boarding a Southwest flight from Burbank to Sacramento in 1998 and having to answer the "three big questions?" Imagine that today:
One -- Did you pack your bags yourself?
"No. My wife packed my bags. I was too busy fuckering around on your website trying to print out our boarding passes that you used to do for us passengers twenty years ago. No. I get the enjoyment of being rejected because it's 10:22AM and the flight is at 10:25AM tomorrow and for "reasons of national security" I can't print this fucking thing out more than a day in advance. You used to send them to me in the mail six weeks before my flight...now I'll be charged five bucks if I ask you at the counter."
Two -- Did anyone unknown to you ask you to carry anything on board the plane?
"My Muslim Bengali co-worker did indeed! ask me to carry a package to our associates in the southland, and I did indeed! find it somewhat odd with its plain brown wrapping and that older model cellularized telephone fastened to its side...but what, exactly, is an unknown person? Surely everyone is known to someone. He's a known person -- as are all the 6.9 billion others on this planet. So no."
Three -- Have your bags been out of your possession since you've packed them?
"Yes. After my business travel we vacationed on the fabulous Carnival Splendor cruise ship, where we just disembarked for my return flight home and where I left my bags out in the #3 hallway unattended for several hours. They were hastily loaded into my trunk by three swarthy 26-year old bearded men who were clearly Carnival employees -- in fact, I remember their names: Chad, Jordan and Al Bania -- it was clear as day on their nametags. I remember, because they refused my tip. I always remember the tip refusalists so I can find them again on my next trip..."
2 comments:
Fun read. I think the sign on your luggage should also be in black on a yellow reflective background in a diamond shape and placed on your lawn occasionally.
Placed on the lawn for all our real domestic terrorists -- the neighbors of mine who routinely race around the "Frye Creek Motorway" like it's their own NASCAR oval.
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