Leave Your Nunchakus At Home

Friday, October 20, 2006

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Leave Your Nunchakus At Home

By J’AMY PACHECO

I’m no jetsetter.

It’s not that I don’t like going places. On the contrary — I enjoy getting away and staying in hotels, where somebody else takes responsibility for cleaning the toilets. But I don’t like to fly.

It wasn’t always that way. I made my first flight at the age of 18, when I flew — alone — from California to New York to visit people I’d met only once. It turned out that I loved flying, and for a very short while, I toyed with the idea of becoming a flight attendant.

I didn’t, though, and when I was in my 20s, a different kind of work took me all over the United States. I “commuted” by plane to places like Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Pawtucket, Houston and Baton Rouge. My then-boyfriend (now husband) also traveled for work, and it wasn’t unusual for us to hook up in some distant city when it was convenient for our paths to cross.

It may be that I overdid it back then, because these days, I have no desire to fly. Oh, one of these days I’d like to take my daughter to Walt Disney World, but other that that, I have no real interest in air travel.

I am, therefore, pretty out of touch with air travel today. I know it’s not like it was in the good old days, when you had to walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke to get from the non-smoking section to the lavatories, and when you could leave your shoes on going through airport security.

This week, it turned out that both my husband and my mother had to fly to distant states. Knowing airport regulations are constantly changing these days, I decided to do some research to find out if they could bring their own toothpaste, or if they’d have to buy it in Ft. Worth and Baltimore.

I was not terribly surprised to read that my husband would have to arrive at our regional airport 90 minutes before his scheduled departure. (I was grateful that he wasn’t traveling to Delhi, India, because if that were the case, he would have to allow 3 ½ hours to get checked in.)

Despite last summer’s “leave your shampoo at home” cautions, travelers are now allowed to bring personal items in liquid or gel form in the cabin – as long as they carry three ounces or less, and all of these items are grouped in a single plastic Ziploc bag.

That didn’t sound too hard. I was surprised to see that travelers can even bring corkscrews and cigar cutters. (Because who could travel without those?)

My husband was pleased to learn he could carry his laptop computer on along with his toothpaste. I discovered this was possible when I found a rather lengthy list of things that you can, and can’t, carry on an airplane today.

Some of them are what I’d call no-brainers: you can’t carry on a box cutter, an ice pick or scissors. I’d say anybody who tried to bring one of those on a plane today is too darned dumb to fly.

But I was a little bit surprised at how complete the list of no-brainers was.

Did you know, for example, that you can’t bring a hockey stick, ski pole, bow-and-arrow set, or a spear gun on an airplane? Okay, those are all used in sports, and maybe it wouldn’t occur to a sportsman that those items could be considered dangerous.

But a meat cleaver? A sword? Gunpowder? Flare guns? I found it hilarious that anybody would have to be told not to bring a sword onto an airplane. And who in the world travels with a meat cleaver?

The list goes on. Did you know it is forbidden to bring an axe, a hammer, a drill or a saw on the plane? And if slow-boarding passengers get on your nerves, don’t even think of using a cattle prod on them, because they’re listed as prohibited, too.

Nor should you consider using your throwing stars or nunchakus, because they’re as forbidden as stun guns, hand grenades, tear gas and gasoline.

I don’t know what amazes me more – the fact that a person would have to be told not to bring dynamite with them on vacation, or that somebody gets paid to sit around thinking up items for this list.

Now there’s a job I could have fun with — as long as I could keep both feet on the ground.

With my shoes on, of course.