"Pop, Puff, Panic"

Now, I know it ain't all about me, but I've naturally been thinking a lot about landing at Detroit Metro Airport yesterday, and my peripheral role in what was apparently an aborted terrorist attack. Apparently, the targeted Amsterdam flight was number 253. I had booked Flight 243, which left about an hour later.

At some point during my Yuletide wanderings in Schiphol Airport, I may have walked past the guy who tried to kill at least 277 other people on Christmas Day. And while I was sitting there thinking how lucky I was for traveling on the biggest holiday of the year, I could just as easily have booked that earlier plane and, and Mr. Asswipe could have actually made his homemade bomb work.

Ironically, a few days before leaving Nairobi, I had been talking to someone about how almost 10 years after 9/11, airport travel was somehow bearable again. By now, you know the drill...take off all your belts and rings and jewelry, don't wear complicated shoes, drink your water before you go through screening, take out your laptops. Every now and then, they'll let you slip a tube of lip gloss through, but you pretty much need to pack all your other lotions perfumes and goop in your checked bags, because you got at least a 30 percent chance that some screener will confiscate it (especially if she likes the color herself).

In one puff of smoke, all those gains have been erased. Watching CNN's coverage of what happened, it's clear that we have just been plunged back into Gulag era security routine at major airports around the world. And lucky me, I get to return to Nairobi through.....

AMSTERDAM!!!

Anyway, it all seems surreal at this point. After 16 hours of flying, I sat on Flight 243 on a Detroit Metro runway for 4 hours, and it took about 2 hours to get through Immigration, and another hour to get a new flight for this morning. In the re-booking line, the wiry, fedora sportin' Greek guy named Demetrios in front of me says he helped put the bomb out. (He was also mackin' me hard. Kept trying to explain how the experience was a divine lesson about what's really important in life. Kept telling me about how much money and property he has in Atlanta, buy how it doesn't mean anything if you don't have someone to share it with. Hell, if he'd been taller, cuter, a bit less tipsy, and had a shave sometime in the past month, he might have REALLY gotten lucky last night.) Behind me in line, two 20-something Indian brothers who were born in Kenya but live in London now say they were questioned for 2 hours, as was everybody else on that plane. In hindsight, except for the occasional squalling toddler, everybody going through Immigration was nearly mute with shock, once we realized the "security breach" was not just some drunken Dutch teenager who set off a firecracker to celebrate landing in America.

Oh, well. At least I scored the last seat on today's 9 AM plane for New York, so I'll be leaving the Best Western Romulus shortly. Odds are, yesterday took care of all the "Recommended Complicated Drama Requirement" for this journey. Looking forward to a very Blessed Boxing Day.