"Getting there is half the fun" - terrorists, hair gel and the dangers of falling asleep on planes.

Waking up to the sound of an alarm clock is never the most pleasant experiences, but it is doubly worse at 5am when you've only gotten to bed at midnight after a lot of beer. But, seeing as I had a 7:30am flight form Milwaukee to Boston, it had to be done.

The first indication that things were slightly out of the normal was the sign by the check-in desk that told us that "Due to new security restrictions, passengers are prohibited from taking any liquids on board the plane". No-one had seen the news or anything (my first thought at 5am was definitely not "let's turn on CNN!"), so we paid it no heed really, until the check-in girl warned me to make sure I went straight to security, as there were long queues. The queue was fairly long, and the first real inkling people got that this wasn't business as usual was the TSA agent walking up and down the qqueue qith teh wheelie-bin telling us to dummp all liquids as they weren't going to be allowed on the plane - water, shampoo, hair gel, toothpaste, you name it, if it wasn't solid at room temp, it went in the bin. There was a good bit of grumbling at this, especially from the guy in front of me who had to bin a $100 dollar bottle of cologne, but we did it anyway, and the queue inched along.

It was only after I was through and wandering past the newsagents stall that I got any idea as to why this was happening - there was a TV on (was Fox News, but if you inore the wavy american flag in the corner and the sensationalist banner headlines, it just about passes for news). So, the brits had broken up this big terrorist ring. The way Fox were spinning it, they'd been pretty much arrested at the airport about to board the planes, so they could blow them all up over the atlantic. Nice to hear when you're just about to board one yourself!

It was only when I'd gotten to Baltimore on my stopover that I realised how much of a kerfuffle the whole thing had caused. The airport was in a panic! I'd been lucky enough to get through security in MLK before things really got mad, but in Baltimore I met ppl who'd speent 2 1/2hrs getting through security and who had missed their flight! I was just lucky that I'd gotten my Baltimore-Boston boarding card in Milwaukee, so I dind't have to brave that again! Was actually easy for me - I got off the plane at gate E8 and strolled over to E5 where I was supposed to take off from again! Had a moment of slight panic when I saw that my plane wasn't up on the departures board, but I asked at the gate and things were OK.

.....And this then is where things went pear-shaped. About half-way between Baltimore and Boston, I remembered that I'd taken my camera out to look thru the pics on the Milwaukee-Baltimore leg of the flight, and hten left it in the seat pocket in front of me. Unfortunately, due to being a tad tired from waking up so early, I fell asleep then, and only woke up when we were landing. So, I grabbed my bag and got off the plane, forgetting about the camera. So, while I was en route to Boston, my camera was en route to Rochester, New York! I went straight up to one of the customer service reps as soon as I landed anyway, and she got onto baltimore, but no sign of it. So, I fille dint he missing itelms form, and left them at it. So, I finally made it to Boston, without any huge big security fuss but without my $400 digital cameral either! :-(