Before traveling home on this trip I wanted to get the vans house batteries replaced. These are the high zoot Eco Ion Earth Smart Lithium Batteries that take up most of the storage space under the bed, and used to be good for three nights of dry camping but now are down to one night, and to be on the safe side you might want to grind the morning koffee beans before you turn in for the evening.
The blue RV shop knew about batteries, had some in stock,
and could get me in this week, so I left my National Park camp on Lake Roosvelt
and was at their door for opening.
At the shop I selected the Battle Born batteries that when I asked the fellow if they were from Nevada, he didn’t know. I looked them up and they are indeed from Sparks Nevada, and I figured batteries made in Sparks had to be good.
Unfortunately, the batteries were too big for most of the storage
space under the bed, so batteries that will fit were ordered, and will be
installed when I return at the end of October.
Back in Spokane, the van got a service, with new fluids and filters.
Her tanks got drained and spritzed with RV anti-freeze. With
the van tied down in her gated community it was off to the airport for me.
The Spokane airport for the last couple of years has been under construction, and the result so far is its larger, and more comfortable, and has lots of plugs to charge your electronics.
This morning at the TSA some ceiling tiles were in a disarray
but I thought nothing of it until I noticed the yellow tape around the scanner,
and the tape was around the scanner because a pipe broke in the ceiling the
other day and rained water down on the scanner and now it doesn’t scan anymore.
No worries I thought they would pat down my hip, and I would
be on my way.
Well, when I set off the metal detector, they had a agent waiting for me. She retrieved my carry-ons off the check point and asked if I wanted to go back to her place for the pat down. I said no right here is fine, so she proceeded to pat me down. The only thing lacking from this inspection was hot rocks and cocoa butter. It felt so darn good I wanted to go back out and go through security again, and I should have because the plane was late arriving anyway.
We later learned that the embalmer was late because it had a
“Bird Strike” approaching Spokane.
Now I learned a long time ago that when leaving Spokane its
good to have a couple of hours of wait time in Seattle and today I planed to
spend that time in the Ak Lounge, having a snack and a soda, but after the
inspectors came out and blew smoke in the engines, and sprayed what I think was WD
40 bird be gone, my relaxing afternoon turned into about 25 minutes to get a
snack and soda before boarding my flight for home.
Now boarding the ride home was going fine. The waiter brought around OJ, Fresh Mountain Spring Water, or Sparkling Wine. The people in steerage filed past, and soon the door was closed.
Now instead of being pushed back and heading home, we
remained sitting at the gate, door closed. We sat like this for almost one hour. The drivers never said anything. The wait staff never said anything, and
we were just sitting on a plane at the gate.
Finally, the guy in row 1 on the window yells to the waiter…”
HOW COME WE AINT GOING”.
Now I thought this was a valid question, and probably other passengers
thought the same. The presentation was
off, as he should have rang the call button, but he didn’t. This did prompt a immediate response from the
wait staff who wanted to know how much this fellow had had to drink.
The fellow told them, apologized for asking the question, and
everything went back as it was before with us sitting at the gate for about
another 20 minutes.
Suddenly the door opened, and two guys came onboard. Now these were not police, they looked more like the guys that charge the batteries on the robotic chairs that roam around the airport broadcasting “Step Aside.”
The two guys asked the questioning fellow to come with them, he did without incident, and soon the drivers announced “Basoba incident abwzk”. Again the driver came on and said “Ukghcb # ggkob 16 foop takeoff.” After breathing fresh jet fumes for a while, we were in the air, heading north, and I’m pretty sure I spotted Mt. Edgecumbe.
What a great day of air travel….
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