Illicit scone

This past weekend, Z and I traveled to Pittsburgh to visit my father, his wife, and my brother and his family. Given that it would have taken a good 14 hours to drive my father kindly purchased tickets for us so that we could enjoy more time visiting than driving. However, in addition to TSA regulations (especially the no water on the plane rule) travel these days is not so simple. For us it means driving two hours to the nearest non-regional airport and if our flight is early-- as it was for this trip-- it also means staying over night. On this particular evening, we arranged to have dinner in the city the night before our flight with Jen1, Jen2, and Jen3 as well as L and their significant others. We ate and were filled (note important foreshadowing) at a lovely Asian-fusion restaurant-- I had a variety of dumpling and then a Chinese curry dish made with duck, yum-- and afterward we shared pitchers of beer at a nearby pub. Z and I left somewhat early in the evening since we had to catch our flight at 6AM.

After a restless and near sleepless night for me, we rolled out of bed at 4:30 AM to be at the airport at 5:00 so that we would make our flight at 6:00. When we arrived at the airport there were a few kiosks selling coffee and other morning sundries but they all had significantly long lines AND I knew I would not have enough time to chug a hot cup of coffee before passing security and there were no coffee kiosks after the security gates. So Z and I stumbled on the plane without our usual coffee jolt assuming that the airline swill would get us through to our layover in Detroit.

We arrived slightly late in Detroit and in my fuzzy-headedness (and now in a state of near starvation--those of you who know me well know how cranky I get when I do not eat on a regular basis) I kinda forgot that we had left our home central time zone and we were now in a time zone an hour later. So Z and I took our time getting to our next gate, admiring the mostly empty airport, riding the train from one gate to the other deciding where in the airport we might have dinner on the way home (note: The Mediterranean Grill in DTW serves up a mean lentil soup, fabulous hummus, and fresh pita), getting coffee and a little snack. In the midst of all this I realized--oh crap!--we're in a new time zone and our flight is scheduled to leave in less than 15 minutes. We bolted to our gate just in time and of course we were made to dump our coffee before the attendant took our tickets. As we walked the walkway maze, Z was still holding his scone-- after all, a scone is a solid not a liquid. As we walked through the plane's door, the steward whose nametag read "Paul" said to Z, something like "Ah, I see you have a scone." Which Z responded in the affirmative? Paul then said, "boy I would like to see that scone" to which Z and I chuckled nervously-- we were not sure if he was kidding or serious until Paul said, "no really, I need to see that scone." At this point, we both looked at each other and I think we both thought, hmmm.... What are our traveling rights? Why does he have to inspect our scone? Do we really have to give him our scone? Is this a new TSA rule? In the meantime, Paul grabbed the scone out of Z's hand mumbled something about TSA rules regarding food and dumped our beloved scone in the trash--in the airplane (now if said scone were atomic, why dump it in the trash that will fly with the plane?!). Now bewildered, insufficiently caffeinated, and hungry Z and I made it past rows of people happy chewing on their granola bars, muffins, cookies, and bagels (was there something about scones we did not know?) to our seats where we immediately began looking in the seat pockets for the flight magazine to see if the TSA rules were listed someplace, which they were not. So Z decided to ask another flight attendant for a copy of the rules but she said they did not have them on the plane (which seems strange and makes it clearer how malleable the rules are in fact). Sensing our displeasure and seeing Paul's interception of our scone, in consolation she provided us with $2 trail mix for free-- no coffee but we got nuts.