thetravelblab.com

I was pretty much fed up with flying even before the crotch bomber. The final straw was when a TSA agent confiscated my hair styling mousse last month as I was getting ready to hop a flight to Florida where I would be boarding a cruise ship to Mexico.

“I’ll have to take your hairspray,” the young security agent said almost apologetically as she removed the tall silver can of Redken Guts 05 from my carry-on bag.

I couldn’t believe I had a) overlooked the item in my carry-on bag, and b) that it was the second time a TSA agent had snarfed the exact same product from me this year.

D’oh!

I know, I know -- what was I doing with a big ol’ can o’ mousse in my carry-on anyway? Especially when I’d been busted with the stuff once before and should have learned my lesson.? I guess you could say I’m still adjusting to traveling without my toiletries case now that airlines have started charging for every checked bag, and I now try to cram everything, including all of my toiletries, into my suitcase and sometimes it doesn’t all fit. So I when I’m finished packing, after I jump up and down on the suitcase a few times, I wind up removing some of the larger, last-to-go-in items that prevent the suitcase from zipping and throw them in my carry-on tote. Problem solved. Until I hit security anyway.

“That’s not hairspray,” I say, hoping that the young woman will suddenly realize that styling mousse is chemically different from hairspray and, in fact, not even a liquid. Indeed, it is mostly air and white stuff that literally disappears in your hands before you even get a chance to put it in your hair. I longed to grab the can away from her and spray a generous blob into my hand like I do every morning and show her: “See? Look…there is no way this could be used as a bomb ingredient,” I would demonstrate.

Oh, how I hate to be without my mousse. Without it, my hair is as flat and lifeless as a post crotch bomber’s sex life.

But does she care? I could see she didn’t, as she coldly disposed of my $15.95 container of glamour-in-a can into the not-so-glamorous garbage can. My dreams of standing on my stateroom balcony with my poofy hair blowing in the sea breeze vanished in the tense terminal air. Instead I envisioned posing for photographs in Cozumel wearing a sombrero balanced atop my mountain of frizzies.

Such a small thing, a container of styling mousse, but what a big difference it can make especially when you will be on a ship for a week and will have no opportunity to buy a replacement while visiting a climate with humidity in the high 200’s.

Alas, as an American who is willing to do her part to protect the safety of the flying public, I quietly surrendered my mousse without incident. After all, everyone else flying in and out of this country was no doubt subjected to the same mousse scrutiny, and therefore there would be no mousse bombs detonated and we would all arrive to our destinations safely.

If bad hair is the sacrifice I have to make so that no terrorist gets away with smuggling, let’s say, explosive powder in, let’s say, their underwear, I’ll do it.

Oh wait -- about a week after my mousse was confiscated, someone did!

If I find out the guy got to keep his styling mousse, too, I’m going to be very angry.

Indiana wants me -- Lord I can’t go back there.

One of the problems with attending a Notre Dame football game, and there are few, is that if you live in Wisconsin, you have to drive through Chicago and part of Indiana to get to there. From our house in Southeast Wisconsin it’s about a 3 ½ hour drive to the Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Indiana. My husband attends every home game of the season. I usually tag along to a couple of games each year. So I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the Indiana Toll Road system has changed over the years from an efficient, user-friendly system that once housed real people in its toll booths, who actually used to smile at you and say hello, to a sluggish, inefficient, worthless pile of crap.

When I first started attending Notre Dame football games back in 1990, I was impressed with the Indiana toll booth operators who personally handed you a ticket and told you to have a nice day. It was a stark contrast between the impersonal, nay, hostile treatment you got from the Illinois toll booth operators, where the employees took your money, grunted if you were lucky, and handed you your change without even looking up. After leaving Illinois, we would cruise into Indiana where the cheerful Indiana toll booth ticket-giver/taker was the first glint of the great weekend that lay ahead -- a symbol of hope, like the first robin of spring or the first step onto the yellow brick road to the Land Of Oz.

I’m sad to report that, alas, the flying monkeys have torn the Indiana Toll Road system to shreds like a helpless scarecrow.

I don’t know what happened to the people, they’re gone. Now only empty toll booths stand guard at the on and off ramps to Highway 90, and an automated machine now spits out your ticket.

And, of course, there is no one to take your money anymore, either, when you are done using the freeway. But instead of a basket to throw your coins into, the toll road managers have opted, instead, to place a tiny slot on the side of the toll booth in which to deposit your loose change. We discovered, as we drove the toll road back to our hotel after the Notre Dame-Boston College game, that this cumbersome way of collecting money can cause quite a traffic backup of people precariously slipping one nickel after another into the coin slot, as if they were paying their entire grocery bill in change at the self service check-out at Wal-Mart.

After watching several toll-payers ahead of us clamber for change, attempt to deposit their coins one at a time, only to have several coins fall to the pavement and have to start over, we began to swear. Because we knew it didn’t have to be this way. We had seen the tollway in its glory days, pumping cars through like a conveyor belt at the U.S. Mint during a stimulus package. Now, it operated more like an outdoor self-service dry cleaner that only takes change; a dry cleaner with four pick-up windows with three of them closed.

It was late. And dark. With several cars still ahead of us digging for change in their seat cushions and traffic backing up for miles behind us, I told my husband to illegally drive through the I-Zoom lane. But because he had already inadvertently done that in Chicago earlier in the day, and once the previous weekend, he refused.

Finally it was our turn to put our handful of coins in the slot.. We could feel hundreds of eyes on us as my husband fumbled for his shekels. When we were finally finished, we noticed that the gate seemed to have a generous delay programmed into it. While I screamed at the gate to open, my husband, being a man of few words, stuck his arm out the window as far as he could and flipped the machine the bird.

“Take that!” he said, satisfied at his social commentary.

I can’t be sure, but I like to think that the Indiana toll booth cameras get hundreds of strikingly similar photos every day.

According to Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, the word “segue” (pronounced seg-way) is defined as, “to make a transition from one thing to another thing smoothly and without interruption.” Not to be confused with “Segway” which can be defined as 1)“a futuristic, two-wheeled personal transporter device which was named after the wrong word” or 2) the scariest thing I have ever ridden in Mexico.

Actually, it was the only thing I’ve ever ridden in Mexico, if you don’t count the open-air, camouflaged Jeep that drove our Segway Excursion group of six at a high rate of speed from the ship dock in Cozumel to the Segway hangar several miles away, in the rain.

My husband and I usually have no trouble agreeing on the numerous off-ship excursion adventures offered when we take a cruise. After several cruises, though, we have learned a few things about organized tours: 1) They don’t always turn out to be exactly as described in the excursions manual. 2) Sometimes they’re not AT ALL as described in the excursions manual. 3) You should always be prepared to back out of an excursion completely if you feel you could die from it.

After perusing our travel documents for our cruise to Cozumel, my husband asked if there were any excursions I was interested in taking. After ruling out anything that required us to board a bus, ride on a boat, or squeeze ourselves into mini-submarines, pretty much all that was left was the “Segway Adventure.”

We more or less swore off bus tours after taking a “Wine and Lunch” tour of Philadelphia several years earlier in a non-air-conditioned trolley, with lunch consisting of a plastic container of hors’du hovers that you had to balance on your knee while the tour guide screamed into her microphone for an hour and a half. The wine part of the lunch never did materialize as the server ran out of wine before making his way to the back of the bus where we were sitting.

And maybe we still had a bad taste in our mouths over the Glass Bottom Party Boat excursion my husband, daughter and I took during a Christmas cruise to the Bahamas -- riding in a rickety boat with no visible life jackets for two hours and not seeing a single fish except at the end when the captain/bartender/singer/ anchored the boat and gave us all a piece of bread to throw overboard where swarms of ugly bread-eating fish appeared on cue. Not to mention the $21.00 we had to scrounge up after each of us ordered a drink that we were led to believe in our tour literature were included in the cost of the ticket. And I quote, “A complimentary rum or fruit punch is served up during the trip.”

So, I thought, what could possible go wrong riding a two-wheeled scooter?

“You have seen them on television and in print -- now it is your opportunity to experience the future and ride the most exciting human transport vehicle today, the SEGWAY,” I read aloud from the tour description to my hubby.

“When will we ever have another chance to try one?” I reasoned.

He furrowed a brow, sighed, but agreed.

Two other couples rode with us in the Jeep to the Segway tour headquarters.

After we were all seated in a small room with a T.V., a heavily accented instructor told us he would be back after we watched the 20-minute safety video.

“But if it eez steel raining outside, we will cancel the tour, no?” he assured us.

My husband’s face lit up at the prospect.

The safety video, which should have been titled, “Why You Never, EVER Want To Attempt To Ride One Of These Things” basically demonstrated 50 or so ways to become seriously injured just by lightly putting one foot on the riding platform of the two-wheeled contraption. Stunt men riding Segways demonstrated falling over head-first, careening sideways, falling down curbs, hitting bumps, falling backwards, smashing into walls and all but being run down by a semi.

Which was my husband’s growing concern.

After the video the instructor passed out full-body safety gear which included a helmet, knee pads, and elbow pads. The six of us lined up to practice mounting and riding a Segway. Getting on is the tricky part -- if you pull the handle too far towards you, you could fall over backwards. If you push it away from you, you could tip over forward. If you step on and move the handle bar forward or backward too much, you will wobble uncontrollably. And then, if you try to jump off out of fear or panic, the Segway will take off without you, and you will more than likely crash a $5,000.00 machine -- which we were strongly encouraged not to do.

We all practiced wobbling on our Segways in the parking lot for a few feet, then turning around

The rain gradually stopped while we practiced. But I couldn’t get the vision out of my mind of the demonstrator in the safety video picking up his Segway and cautiously carrying it over a puddle of water. “Do not ride on wet surfaces!” the video warned. I looked out at the road which was populated with enormous craters of water.

“Did he say we’re first going to ride across that highway?” My husband asked me aside.

Yes, I had to admit, even with the heavy accent, I heard the instructor say that in order to get to the scenic riding trail, we would all have to cross the four-lane highway on our Segways -- inevitably straight through a number of deep puddles that should have big red X’s across them like in the video.

“Do they yield to pedestrians in this country?” I whispered to my husband, who was apparently scared speechless.

“What do you say we go back to the ship and fall off a couple of barstools instead?” he finally suggested.

Suddenly he ripped his protective gear off and left in a heap on the sidewalk to the shocked looks of our fellow Segway hostages. Not the smoothest of segues, I’ll admit, but I followed. And then we ran for our lives back to the ship -- so fast not even Paul Blart would have been able to catch us.

Word on the street - well, actually on the ship - has it that the gays will be taking over the entire Mariner of the Seas, one of Royal Caribbean’s opulent sailing vessels, from October 18 - 24^th. I found this out while having a conversation with one of the wine tenders at the champagne bar during a recent cruise on The Mariner to the Mexican Riviera.

Lately my husband and I have found that our conversation frequently turns to gays after a couple of glasses of Domaine Chandon at the champagne bar, our favorite hangout spot on Royal Caribbean’s luxury cruise liners.

“The gays have booked the entire ship,” bartender Ronny says of the upcoming cruise.

“What?!” I shriek.

“It’s called dee Atlantis cruise,” he says in his thick Indian accent.

My husband’s and my penchant for the bubbly has led us to seeking out the cruise ship’s champagne bar whenever we sail. After some research we were horrified to discover that not every ship has a champagne bar. Therefore there are some sailings we will never partake in -- unless the ship is remodeled and a champagne bar is installed.

Because our interest is mainly in tasting and comparing the numerous varietals of champagne when we belly up to the bar at precisely 4 p.m. each day, we tend not to be interested in the sexuality of those around us. Not even our own. But fate forced our hand last fall when we sailed to the Caribbean Islands on The Liberty of the Seas when, at some point during the cruise, the champagne bar became the gay bar. From the first day that Ralph sashayed into the bar to meet up with his mother, Lillian, (with whom we had struck up a conversation at the bar) after his facial, every day a few more gays showed up until by the final night of the cruise there was hardly a hetero to be found save for me, my husband and Lillian.

On our most recent cruise to Mexico, my husband recognized our bartender Ronny from our Caribbean cruise in May of ’08 on the Mariner. While catching up we told him we had sailed on the Liberty of the Seas last October. I still had photos of our trip on my camera and showed him pictures of the champagne bar bartenders, Allen and Jemma, -- they stood smiling behind the bar surrounded by “the gays,” as we had come to refer to them. Or as Ronny pronounces it, “Da gase.” In the photo Allen, who was also from India, was smiling and being a good sport even though he once remarked to us privately -- “We do not have this in India.”

“We had so much fun,” I reminisced to Ronny. On and on I waxed nostalgic about the gay couple from Cincinnati, and Ralph who brought nine bathing suits with him and packed so heavy he was forced to leave behind a bunch of clothing at the airport. And how he had left his gay partner back home and secreted away with his mother and how one night another gay guy showed up at the bar who happened to know Ralph’s boyfriend and Ralph’s ensuing dramatic and intoxicated meltdown because he was convinced the guy was going to spill the secret to his live-in sugar daddy. We became such good chums with Ralph and Lillian that on the last night of the cruise my husband and I walked Lillian back to her cabin to help her put her suitcases outside the door. Ralph was enmeshed in some drama back at the bar. He had confided in us early on in the trip that he was worried about his 80-year-old mother because she seemed to be getting forgetful. That explained why she turned to Glenn and I at least twice each and every night and asked us if this was our first cruise. The last day of our trip Ralph gave me a necklace he had purchased on the ship and, smiling, he implored coyly, “When this you see, think of me.”

I found myself missing our fun-loving gay friends as we reminisced over our fourth, (or fifth? Whose counting?) glass of Veuve Clicquot. I looked around the near-empty bar, raised my glass and bellowed, “We need more gays!”

Somehow I hadn’t noticed the two men sitting on the far side of the bar. Or if I had, I had mentally discounted them as plain old boring heterosexuals. Ronny shot me a glance and my husband whispered, “Shhhh.”

A few minutes later the men got up and left

“Were they ghhhaaaaaaaaay?” I slurred to Ronny holding my glass out for a refill.

He nodded discreetly.

I beamed. That was more like it! There’s nothing like the promise of a bar full of gays on the first day at sea. I’d give my last bottle of Dom Perignon to be there on the 18^th.