Oh buckle up, because this is a saga of chaos, poor decisions, and inappropriate groping.
So. Yesterday. Our bright-eyed plan was to wake up at 5am, gracefully float to the airport for our 7:50am flight to San Francisco, and land like functioning adults. Beautiful. Sensible. Except one tiny detail: I didn’t start packing until 1am. That’s right—four hours before wake-up, I was doing the frantic “does this count as an outfit?” shuffle with my suitcase while contemplating life choices and whether deodorant counts as liquid.
Now, while I was getting ready to cosplay as someone with their life together, our flight got delayed… to 12:50pm. Because there was no crew. Like… they just forgot they needed people to fly the plane. Which feels like a core component of aviation but okay.
Meanwhile, we had a Lyft driver scheduled for 6am like responsible adults (who procrastinated packing until 1am but whatever). I didn’t want to cancel the ride in case we could get rerouted through DFW or Hogwarts or literally anywhere. So there I was, on the phone with American Airlines from 5:15 to 6:32am, desperately playing “Choose Your Own Adventure: Delayed Flight Edition.” Spoiler: there was no happy ending. Just a lot of “Hmm, no ma’am, that one’s full too.”
So off we go to Phoenix. Yay?
Fast forward to the airport—where dreams go to die—and Ari gets absolutely violated by TSA. Not a normal “arms out, ma’am” pat-down. No. This was a “hand to cheek, deep lunge into the gluteal abyss” situation. Like, not even behind a curtain. They did it out in the open like it was a demonstration at a county fair. I’m standing there like, “Should I tip? Call HR? Pretend I don’t know her?”
Anyway, we flew to Phoenix, got stranded there like budget pioneers, and are now flying directly to Santa Rosa tomorrow like nothing happened. Just your standard “get to San Francisco, get a free butt exam on the way” trip.
Travel: it builds character. And TSA trauma.
