We arrived at the Prescott Airport around 5.30am on Saturday 17th September 2011 and it is hardly the busiest airport in the nation at that hour, but the TSA were alive and well. Watched a TSA worker inspect our suitcase thoroughly and I wondered if she was going to get all the stuff back in that she took out. She did, and it was a miracle, because we had trouble getting it all in in the first place. Conformity to rules is a must with TSA.
They don't have a back scatter scanner in Prescott, so we passed the little "walk through door thingy" that they have there. We boarded our puddle jumper to Los Angeles that was piloted by a young man who looked to be no more than 16 years of age. He assured me he was at least 25 but I should have asked for his birth certificate just to be sure.
We did not get to see Prescott from the air.............must be a noise ordinance thing or something, but rather we flew over Chino Valley and off over the arid landscape until we reached California. The most remarkable thing we saw from the air was the cloud cover over the LA area. It looked like a carpet of some sort that had been tightly fitted to conform with the undulations of the mountains and it was hanging on for dear life lest someone loosen a corner and trip. Heaven forbid that we sue the 'keeper of the skies' for damages caused by tripping on this wonderful carpet laying job. I knew that somewhere under this carpet was LA but could not see anything until we dropped down through the clouds and there was the airport. Totally Amazing to me that we found it without so much as a hint of a visual.
LA airport is massive but we found our way to the correct terminal - right next door to the terminal where the puddle jumper had released us into the wild. They have banks of 'check-in terminals' but we had to have help checking into our slot - there has to be uniformity in the check-in process or no one would find their plane let alone their assigned seat. I wondered if the TSA were going to rearrange our suitcase again because there is no agreement between Great Lakes Airlines (from Prescott to LA) and Delta which was to be our next plane on this journey to Salt Lake City and beyond. A kindly lady helped us because we are "computer terminal challenged" when it comes to checking in at airports.
Our first order of business was to get some breakfast. So we passed up the Mexican breakfast bar and the Croissant crowded bar and settled for McDonald's. Wonderfully I found that they now serve Oatmeal and I settled for that instantly. It was pretty good, but not like at home. Nothing is as good as Home! Spoke to a couple there who are from Japan. Surprised them totally to hear a white person speak Japanese. The people of Japan believe that their language is so difficult that no one, other than a born Japanese can ever speak it and fluency is certainly not within the grasp of a foreigner. WRONG! Even after 40 years I can speak the language and it surprises the heck out of them. This couple are from Tokyo, which is where I served my first mission.
Our Delta flight to Utah was smooth until we reached the SLC valley and then it was quite bumpy. Sat next to a young man who was just returning from Australia. He is a grad student in environmental studies. Asked him where he had been in Australia and he said Yeppoon. I commented that this particular city is in Queensland, on the coast, and he was totally taken aback that a stranger knew exactly where this city was located. Well, Yeppoon is not exactly a huge bustling metropolis after all, but he said he had met some other Australians on his travels who did not even know the name of the city or where it is located. Well, I am from Queensland, after all.
My friend Jan, who is also from Australia, picked us up at the airport and took us over to see Reid and Roxhane Belnap. Reid and his first wife (now deceased) were my dorm parents at Church College of Hawaii and I have called him father since 1967. It was a great visit and he looks in good health - much better than in November last year when I visited him soon after they discovered that he had Prostate Cancer and that it had migrated to his bones.
We left there and went to Provo. What a mess the traffic was. It was game day. Not just game day but THE GAME DAY of the semester. They were playing University of Utah - the greatest rivalry in the world. When I was in Grad School the day the Utes played the Cougars (BYU), someone from U of Utah had gone to Provo and painted the BYU Cougar statue Bright RED. Well, everyone and his dog were in cars trying to find a parking spot, and all of them seemed to be taken - all that is except the $20 lot where you could easily have parked a tractor trailer and still have room for 20 more cars.
We found the Missionary Training Center with the use of Jan's Garman and we stopped at the Gate to announce that we were here, at last. The Security Guard was dressed in a crisp White Shirt and black pants and his uniform stood out from anything else in the area. We have to have uniforms if we want to look professional.
So we have had to conform to the requirements of the TSA.
Have experienced uniformity of checking in procedures to board a plane.
Experienced the uniforms of security guards.
We are totally safe with all these things in place.
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