For those of you interested, I just returned from California, with my scope,
and all in all, a pleasant experience.

I took the train down, so only flew on the return trip. I had the scope in
my backpack. Luckily, as I walked through the metal detector, nothing
beeped, so I was able to concentrate on getting my scope through. They
stopped the belt as it went through, and I could see the staff pointing at
the image and asking about it. They decided they wanted to open the pack. I
said it was my birding scope and binoculars. They had no problem with the
binos, but took the scope out of it's case and examined it. The woman said
it was her first birding scope, although she'd been on the job for years.
They asked me lots of questions about it, like how far away could I see a
bird with it, and had I visited some of their wonderful Southern California
birding sites.

At first, I thought it was so great that they were so interested in birding.
Only later did I realize they were probably grilling me about birds to see
if it really was for birding!

On a side note, my poor husband, who had taken every precaution known to man
to sail through security (including buying a belt with a plastic buckle!)
set off everything, and was taken aside and searched so thoroughly, I began
to get a little concerned. One of the security guys told him he was clean,
but they were training people that day, and he just got lucky enough to be
chosen to train the new guy!!

But the whole atmosphere was relaxed and non-threatening, and they were
joking with me by the time we finished. (By the way, this was at Orange
County's John Wayne airport, which was very uncrowded and pleasant, and has
been every time I have used it.)



Christy Anderson
christyrae at hotmail.com
Bellevue, WA