At DFW Airport

Traffic’s still not a major factor on the way to the airport, and we arrive at the United arrival area in Terminal B around 8 o’clock. We check our bags with the skycap. (And pay the new luggage fees. Yay.)

Our two biggest suitcases are on loan from friends Darren & Jill – we have smaller luggage ourselves, and we normally borrow bigger bags from my parents, but they are also traveling to California this week. So before the luggage is sent on its way, I take a picture of Jill’s bag’s distinctive handle tagged for SNA (the Orange County/John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana) and send it to Darren. These bags have already been to both Disneyland and Walt Disney World earlier this month, and now they get to return. (Darren had volunteered to accompany them again, but we didn’t have the packing space.)

With our bags on the way to CA, it’s time for us to join them. We head upstairs and through security. Bob, with his hip replacements, is wanded yet again. This is my first time through airport security with metal implants myself – I have two plates, two pins, and several screws permanently in my right ankle. My surgeon told me that I probably would not set off the detector because of how low they are on my body (“You may or may not find that reassuring,” he noted), and he is correct – I pass through the detector with nary a beep.

Becky, the boys, and I gather our shoes and belongings from the scanner conveyor belt. Is it just me, or are the TSA Agents getting funnier as time goes by? The older man agent at the security exit cheerfully prods us with, “You can get refixed over here. Reshoe, uplink, downlink, take all the time you need. Just hurry up!”

Our gate is right by security. We have a little time before our flight – enough for a McDonalds breakfast. Then its onto the plane for the first leg of our outbound journey – a quick hop to Denver.