Adventures at the Airport

I don't know why it's taken me so long to post this last piece I wrote while I was traveling with the Malaysians - it's just been sitting on my computer, waiting to be copied and pasted. The last week has been busy, though, with news of a hearing date for Noah's Law and catching up with life in Maine after two weeks away. I'll write more about the hearing soon. For now, here's a story from my recent adventures:

If you’ve read the posts about our travels home from the Bahamas, you know I have a bad track record when it comes to flying – more often than not, I run into some kind of trouble. So far on this trip, my flights have gone amazingly smoothly, and my suitcase has made it to each destination on time. I did run into some unique excitement when we arrived at the St. Louis airport last night, though…

I was toward the back of the plane, so I was among the last in the group to exit. I started walking through the terminal, following the signs to the baggage claim, when suddenly there was a security guard right in front of me, holding his arms out and telling everyone to stop walking. I was totally confused – why couldn’t we continue on to the baggage claim? After a minute, a guy with a headset on came over to explain to us that they were filming a movie and just needed to stop traffic for a couple of minutes.

Since I was toward the front of the group, I started looking at the cleared area, trying to see if there was anyone famous wandering around, but all I could see was several people with headsets. Finally, after three or four minutes, they let us go again and I continued down the terminal, still looking around to see if there was anyone famous in the vicinity, but not slowing my pace at all. I figured they were probably filming some kind of low-budget movie and I probably wouldn’t recognize the person anyway.

When I got to the baggage claim, my suitcase was already on the carousel since we’d been delayed. I grabbed it and pulled off to the side to wait for the rest of the group. As the others gathered, they were talking excitedly about the filming. I asked if there was anyone famous, and they looked at me like I was crazy. “Didn’t you see him? Didn’t you see George Clooney standing right there?” Somehow, I totally missed it – I was twenty feet away from George Clooney and didn’t even realize it.

I guess I’ll take that kind of airport excitement over the kind I usually have…