Traveling to Detroit is a completely different story when you are traveling with three people who aren't US citizens. In this case Janu from Singapore, Patricia from the Netherlands, and Ricardo from Brazil. I thought I got stopped a lot at check points before, try traveling with 3 foreigners after 9-11. If you think they check people randomly, think again. Janu of course got the worst of this being that she is of middle eastern descent. There are on average about 3 places you can get stopped when traveling by plane.
1. As you enter the airport you check your luggage in. Normally this involves showing your ticket, they weigh your luggage, send it through a metal detector, and you head off to check point 2. With Janu, this involved opening her luggage, dumping everything out on the ground, examining the contents of her shampoo, tasting her toothbrush for traces of poison, trying on her underwear, and finally letting a bomb sniffing dog root through her purse. Satisfied (or disapointed) that their were no bomb traces, we then moved on to carry on.
2. Moving down the airport we enter a slightly more secure area before getting to the actual departure area. This is where they check your carry on luggage as well as send you through a metal detector. They checked my laptop for bombs and sent me through where I collected my stuff and proceeded to wait. Ricardo made it through pretty well. Patricia was another story. Seeing that she was from the Netherlands by her passport, they immediatly picked her as a likely drug smuggler and began a thourough search of her belongings. Janu was still pegged as a terrorist and was sent through the metal detector several times as well as a few wand wavings to determine if she had in fact carried a bomb on. Again, running her bags through the metal detector was not enough, and they were also searched very thouroughly. Several times by several people.
3. Just before boarding the plane, they do one more screening, where people are picked at random and asked to be searched again. By an amazing twist of fate, Jan was once again stopped and asked to step behind a wall where she was patted down and checked for bombs one more time. Oh well, at least when we get to Saint Louis we will all ready be in the secure area and shouldn't have to go through with this again.
Arriving in Saint Louis, we learned that our flight had been cancelled due to possible missing engine number 3 and the next flight we could all board was 6 hours later. On the bright side, 6 hours is enough time to explore so we decided to take a tour of St. Louis Missouri. Conveniently enough there is a train that runs right out of the airport to the other end of Saint Louis.
Ok, I know Colorado Springs is not a Mecha of diversity, but Saint Louis was just weird. At the airport everything seemed pretty normal, we get on a train heading towards the Arch and the first stop, everyone is black. I didn't really give any thought to it at first. Then the second stop everyone is black again, third stop, black. Forth stop everyone is white. 5th stop, everyone is white, next stop everyone is black again. Currently this isn't exactly what I would call a great neighborhood, run down housing, trash and graffiti everywhere. Eventually we get to the park where the arch is located at, oddly enough everyone is white again. Maybe I'm just blind but it's just weird to see how segregated everything is down there. No, I'm not completely blind, I know that this stuff happens all the time, but it's just never been so... black and white. I learned long ago that anyone who says that racism or even gender treatment (glass ceiling kinda thing) isn't a problem these days is probably a white male. It's just hard to see when your not on the receiving end.
The arch was actually really cool. Much more impressive when your standing under it than it is when your standing at a gift shop looking at it on a post card. We didn't have time to go to the top as our journey so far had taken longer than expected so after spending some time there, we headed back. Upon arriving back at the airport, Janu was immediatly searched for chemical weapons... twice. No joking! Ok, maybe not for chemical weapons, but again she got stopped in the completely random carry on luggage search as well as the completely random boarding check point.
The purpose of the trip, by the way, was to learn all about Voice over IP. Basically instead of running your phones over the standard phone lines you run them over a network. Kinda cool, I can check my voicemail from my email, or have the computer read me my email over the phone to me. Of course, the real problem is that if the network goes down, so do all the phone lines... Eep. Makes it nice working at a help desk where whenever something really bad happens, we instantly get a drop in call volume and things look like they are working well. Janu and Patricia were both interesting to watch as they both looked at the rammifications to the technology. Singapore is VERY strict and have laws governing everything. They watch their people do pretty much everything short of going to the bathroom and Janu was very excited about the ability to monitor just about everything the person ever did. The Netherlands are very loose and have many laws to protect privacy. So while Janu was like a kid in a candy shop, Patricia was horrified that anything like that could actually even be brought into the Netherlands. Of course leaving Detroit, Janu was again stopped at ever random check point. Some peoples luck...