Fun With X-Rays

Posted Monday, March 21, 2005, at 10:47PM by Eric Richardson

Last of my sort of leftover posts from travelling... Yesterday at the Charleston, SC, airport I managed to really confuse the x-ray guy. As requested I pulled my laptop out of its case and sent it through seperately. Even so, my bag had lots of interesting shapes for the guy to get confused with. The screener took three or four minutes looking through every pocket and ended up pulling out my little bicycle pump. I hadn't intended to bring it along, but I had forgotten to take it out after giving the bike a spin on Tuesday. Running that and the bag through seperately seemed to satisfy him, but it definitely seemed more trouble than was warranted.

This isn't the first time that bag's given me x-ray troubles. One time going into City Hall the security guard never could figure out what a shape he was seeing in the x-ray machine was. He looked through everything in the bag and ended up baffled, but at least satisfied I was harmless.