the flight back

So I realized that I begin most of my stories with 'so, . . .) I'm just having a moment of self realization.

So I came back from a whirlwind trip to the US last weekend. My brother got married to a wonderful woman in Petoskey and I had a chance to be part of the festivities. It was great to see the family again and to see Robert in a great place.

The return home was a little less enjoyable. The eternal flights, the jet lag, and all that. It didn't help that I was carrying about 300 pounds of food contraband in my carry-on luggage (turns out you have to pay if your checked luggage is over 50 pounds, but they never weigh your 2 allowed carry-ons.) I took this loophole to its ridiculously logical conclusion and had the world's heaviest roller-bag/backpack combo in history. A stewardess wanted to help me get my bag in the overhead compartment at one point and I tried to warn her that this might not be a good idea. I think she's alright by now.

So in the GR airport I get flagged by the security checkin. I'm thinking they are going to tell me that the little conveyor belt can't handle bags this heavy. Instead they tell me that I'm not allowed to have liquids in my bag. Of course I knew this which is why all my liquids were in the checked luggage. That's when I was informed that gels and pastes are considered liquids. Turns out that Nutella is considered a paste. All 25 pounds of it. I start to panic at the thought of throwing 25 pounds of Nutella away. The guard suggested that I should just move the nutella to my checked baggage (he obviously was unaware of my packing genius which got both of my checked bags to exactly 50 pounds and no extra room to squeeze in anything new.)

As a side note, the box of velveeta cheese that I had packed was not considered a liquid, gel, or paste. Which begs the question, what exactly would the authorities call it? It's clearly not a solid, but it is oh so yummy.

So I go back to the front counter with my nutella cases to try and get my checked bags back off the plane. I figured it would be worth the $100 penalty to be overweight on my checked luggage in order to have nutella in China. Oddly, when I walked up to the counter the woman asked if I was Jeff Stout. (this happens to me a lot so I didn't think too much of it). I said 'yes'. She said 'come with me'. I said 'Uh oh'.

Turns out my luggage never made it onto the plane. It was sitting open next to the giant scanning equipment. She asked me what I was thinking sending this stuff through the scanner. I said 'my wife wanted me to bring a couple of things back to china with me, but I didn't think it would be an issue'. At that point she held up a small bottle of bike chain lube and asked me if I knew what it was. I said 'bike chain grease'. She said I was wrong. In her world it was an extremely flammable liquid that could be used to make a bomb. She then asked why I lied when the checker inner lady asked me if any of my bags had any explosives packed in them. I said 'because I thought it was just chain grease'. Apparently she thought my smile at the thought of this ridiculous situation was inappropriate to the gravity of the situation. She made me give her my passport so she could make a photocopy and send a report immeidately to the fbi. I would be on a watch list for a good long time. I'm not sure what this means, but she was pretty excited about finally putting somebody on that list.

To complete the 'am I in america or china right now' madness, she ended with the question 'and what are you hiding in the gallon jug of syrup'. You can probably see where this is going, but I said 'syrup'. She said 'why do you need to bring a gallon of syrup anywhere and why is that thing setting off all kinds of alarms in our system'? I said 'my kids like syrup? and maybe your machine is a racist?' She didn't think that was funny at all.

In the end, Aunt jemimah and the bike grease got thrown in the trash. This nicely made room for my nutella (turns out one gallon of syrup weighs 25 pounds. A pleasant coincidence) The bag was repacked, checked and I went back through the security checkout and had a delightly short conversation with the original security guard about how my nutella made it into my checked luggage safe and sound.

I made it home and celebrated christmas in october with my wife and kids tearing up over granola bars, crystal light, chex mix, hot chocolate mix, and yes big beautiful jars of nutella.