Isn’t it funny how when you wake up you retain the emotion of the dream you were just having? This morning I woke up really frustrated and irritated. And it’s because the dream I’d just finished make me that way.
I dreamed (dreamt?) that Laralee and I decided to travel abroad. Yes, that’s right– it was time for a trip to an exotic foreign country. For some reason we chose Toronto, Canada. (Hey, dreams don’t always make a lot of sense.) But in order to get there with cheap airfare, we had to take a flight through Seattle first. So Denver to Seattle to Toronto. It seems ridiculous, but I’d wager there’s an airline out there somewhere who has a route like that.
Luckily we had a seasoned world traveler with us: Chancellor was flying from Denver to Seattle (he lives in Olympia) and he was going to help us get through the difficulties associated with modern air travel. Apparently La and I just couldn’t get to Seattle on our own.
So we made it safely to Seattle, which was great. Chancellor bade us farewell and headed down to Olympia, and we contemplated the next leg in our journey: the long flight to Toronto. However, I’d forgotten my passport. La had hers, thankfully, but I was getting increasingly irritated. We all know that today isn’t like The Good Ol’ Days when you could drive to Canada without any paperwork, or fly without a passport. I mean, Canada is just an extension of the United States anyway, right?
As an aside, I should point out that I did travel to Toronto many years ago, and almost didn’t get back into the States because I not only didn’t have a passport, but also didn’t have a driver’s license or any form of photo ID. My UMR student ID, a Visa card, Blockbuster video card, and even a Selective Service card weren’t sufficient identification. The woman at O’Hare’s customs desk warned me in a very stern voice that flying into the United States was very different than flying into Canada (which I’d done without any hassle a few days earlier) and that I was lucky she was going to let me back into this great country.
In any case, with all the new TSA restrictions and the likelihood that I’m on their watchlist by now, I was concerned that we’d get to Toronto and I’d end up an expatriate: banned from my homeland and wandering the streets of Toronto while my family lived their happy lives in Colorado.
That’s pretty much when I woke up, and I was just so darn annoyed at the TSA and the airlines and Toronto.
Fortunately I got over it, and the rest of the day has been a lot of fun. But I’m not planning any trips outside the U.S. for a while, just in case.