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My most daring adventure (Part 2)
(Back to continue on what happened. The first part is here.)
So I was waiting on the security scan line in an airport, and all the sudden I saw a secretary from the company I work for in the same line a few positions in front of me. She is a very nice older lady and great secretary. But we all know that the older secretaries has this uncanny skill of knowing everyone in the company and recognize you right away. My fear sense told me that I am in the most dangerous territory. I am not out at my work yet, and being read here would mean that I will have a lot of explanation to do (though I don't believe that will jeopardize my job). What I can do there is to hope that the body scanner line would move faster, but it got almost stuck there. Backing off is not an option (my luggage has gone into the x-ray), and there is no running away either. I felt that I am trapped there, and all I could do is wait.
It felt like a few hours to me (actually it is probably just a couple of minutes in reality) but finally TSA saw that the line is getting too long. They opened up the smaller metal scanner on the side and waved a string of ladies going through the metal scanner door. Our secretary went through, and I went through also (I have to take the rare lady advantage there). :-) I quickly grabbed my luggage and hurried toward my gate. I made it through, and am out of the woods (almost), because I knew for sure that secretary is going to another city (we just chatted in the morning).
Arrived at my gate, I quickly scanned the area and saw nobody I knew. I can finally breathe a sigh of relief and got a seat. A older lady sat next to me in the waiting area started to chat up with me, and we had a fun conversation with her kids and their trip driving up there from San Francisco. It is amazing that sometimes older women is the most non-judgemental group of people. Maybe it is their caring mature of being a mom. I don't know, but I really enjoyed the lady-to-lady chat about their trip, which other wise would be really boring if it were in a man-to-man conversation.
Getting on the airplane, I kept my head down and didn't talked to anyone. The flight went smoothly, but it seems that my adventure is not done yet. When it landed at San Francisco, I knew that I have only a few minutes to the (already delayed) departure time of my connection flight to San Diego. I jumped out of the airplane as quick as I can, and run through the gate area as fast as a lady could do. :-) A young couple with their two kids run with me. But we still missed the flight. Back to the customer service counter, they got me re-booked to next day, and got me a hotel that is 25-minutes away by shuttle. It was so laud there that I can't tell if they addressed me as a Mr or Miss. But at this point, I really didn't care. I won't bother you with more details about how the security guard sent me to the wrong station for shuttle and how I finally found the driver. But on the shuttle I had another older Chinese lady sitting next to me started a conversation with me about her story of missing her flight to St Louis. I mean there is probably noway they would mis-identify me from my voice, but they chatted away just like there is nothing abnormal. Isn't that amazing?
It must be my lucky / unlucky day. Who said travel is boring?
PS. I finally made home the next morning. With time to properly madeup before leaving my hotel room. I don't want to do that at airport family restrooms again.
PPS. Here is a selfie I took with my phone while having breakfast on the second day at the airport.
