UPDATE 11 April
In answer to a couple email’s the “apocalyptic thriller” I was reading was by Joel Rosenberg (US HERE – UK HERE)
I’ve read a couple series by him, including the one starting with The Last Jihad (US HERE – UK HERE) and the one starting with The Twelfth Imam (US HERE – UK HERE)
____ Originally Published on: Apr 10, 2018
Back to the cooler clime.
Yes, that is a police check point on the right.
Last night we met some folks for a dinner party. These were people I was with on a great pilgrimage a couple years back and who are going to Italy again in … well… about 10 days.
Some tapas.
This is a kind of canneloni with chicken inside. Great.
Killer shrimp.
Paella Valenciana.
Photos of skylines are tricky, especially with just a phone.
Here’s another view.
This intersection had 6 billboards for the upcoming Avengers movie, though in this shot you can only see four.
LA. Hrumpf.
Traveling East from here is a bit frustrating. It takes hours and you lose hours, so your workday is effectively shot.
Perhaps more later.
UPDATE
More…
There’s an extremely unhappy cat onboard.
Why, oh Lord?
UPDATE:
Now people have to be shuffled because of allergies.
I am tempted to bless some water – just a glass and a packet of salt are all that’s needed – and toss it in that direction but the demons in the cat would probably just get more agitated.
UPDATE:
Fluffy did precisely what we all feared within its carrier, thus detracting from the already less than pleasant atmosphere.
UPDATE:
After a surprisingly good hamburger at a fast food joint, I headed to the lounge, where I ran into my good friend Fr Sirico of ACTON INSTITUTE. We caught up on friends and parish news. He is always good value as the Brits say.
And it’s always fun to write ACTON INSTITUTE.
That said, Our connection is late in arriving and so I am enjoying the ambience of MSP Concourse F. I am sure many of you have fond memories of Concourse F. I know I do.
I’ve firmly emplaced my Bose noise reducing gear and will now wade back into my apocalyptic “thriller” by Joel Rosenberg.
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I thought cats and dogs (except legitimate service dogs) had to transported with the cargo in crates?
Are you flying Delta? If so that Cat may be a closet NRA member and showing its owner its displeasure of flying that carrier!
Play the theme from “Carwash” as you drive through LA area, or maybe you are already out of there.
The picture of the police checkpoint reminds me that it is time once again to express my gratitude for my adopted home state of Idaho. The Idaho Supreme Court has held that random sobriety checkpoints violate the Idaho Constitution. Also, in this age when the liberals are openly declaring their desire to repeal the Second Amendment, I give thanks for Article I, Section 11 of the Idaho Constitution, which forbids licensure, registration and special taxation on the ownership or possession of firearms or ammunition, and also forbids the confiscation of firearms other than those actually used in the commission of a felony. Idaho also permits concealed carry on college campuses. And we don’t have nearly as many murders annually in the entire state as they have just in the city of Chicago. Deo gratias.
I haven’t had the pleasure of MSP Concourse F, Father. My point of view of airport ambiance is, well….
My first or second trip by air as a small child ~45 years ago was an international flight on TWA from their landmark terminal at JFK, I think JFK still had the three freestanding airport chapels then, and I got my TWA wings (real metal pin)!
Today, the TWA terminal is a protected landmark but impractical and long unused as a terminal, blockier structures grow around it, and someone’s trying to redevelop it as a hotel; the chapels are decades gone – replaced by a consolidated prayer room in terminal 4 (last time I was there, anyway, though I’m cranky enough to still call it IAB); and no airline would give anything approaching those wings today, metal edges & lethal sharp points, and TSA would instantly confiscate.
So, for me… concourses and the like hit their high point 45 years ago. Flying (or leaving off /picking up someone) remained a great adventure through childhood, but ambiance has been downhill since.
I’ve been through airports since (and even recently) that are (to various degrees) spacious, modern, clean, functional, have amenities, and are not unpleasant…. but I’d be hard-pressed to think of one that has style.
APX, consider yourself lucky to have missed some of the background news and trends lately regarding traveling animals. One or two of the major US airlines have had a bad few months – examples of bad service in legitimate animal travel and ridiculous customer expectations.
Beyond that – don’t get me started!
Someone near & dear to me is a legitimate service dog user. They travel, they have a professionally-trained dog and are trained in working with it, have legitimate need of it, and take responsibility for their dog’s behavior. They also deal with a good chunk of ignorance and sometimes illegal discrimination. There’s some case to be made for emotional support animals, too.
However, I don’t have much sympathy for folks who want their pet to travel with them and think they should be in the cabin with them. As for the people who abuse ADA and other access law by going to online certificate mills, printing service animal “credentials” just so they can have Fluffy with them where Fluffy has no business being…. suffice it to day I think there’s a place for those people and it’s not as nice as Concourse F!
Idaho always sounds like a nice state.
Kathleen10, as long as we never give the liberals the power to screw the place up, like they have my native state of California.