Home at last!

After three long months away, we are finally back home in Philadelphia! The trip home got off to a great start when United printed my name in rhyming form on my baggage receipt:

Caro Charrow!

Then it got kind of weird when we went through security. Ben and I always opt out of the full body scanner, which usually isn't an issue. Except last night there were no women TSA agents to pat me down, so I had to wait a really long time for one to come from another part of the airport. While I was waiting, the guy who stood by the body scanner got really chatty with me (in a friendly way, not a creepy one) - he spoke four languages (English, French, German, and Japanese) and was eager to show off. I'm not sure which one was his first language but it wasn't English, which is relevant because some of his word choice later was a little odd.

After a while I asked him why he thought more women didn't join the TSA, and he had apparently given that question a great deal of thought. He said most passengers aren't "physically normal" - at which point he gestured to me - but are rather "very American" - at which point he used his hands to indicate having a really large belly. He then explained that when you pat down "an American like that" you have to "lift a lot of lard," and the vast majority of passengers are that type of American. "No one wants to be a lard-pusher for their job," but women find it more distasteful than men do. I'm not sure if that was actually funny or if Ben and I only thought it was because we were punchy from flying overnight, but we've spent most of our waking hours since then calling each other "lard pusher."

The other funny thing to emerge from our summer travels was my suitcase wheel. All summer I had found my rolling suitcase to be really heavy to pull, but I figured it was just because I had three months worth of things packed in there. A few times Ben said he thought it "sounded funny" as I was pulling it, but I always swore it was fine, just overloaded. After three months and countless miles of sweatily dragging my suitcase around (Philly -> Chicago -> San Francisco -> Denver -> San Francisco -> Boulder -> San Francisco -> Ann Arbor -> Charlotte -> San Diego -> Philly), I finally got around to looking underneath it.

Oops.

As far as we can tell, something had gotten stuck in one of the wheels and prevented it from turning. My relentless dragging around of the suitcase despite that fact ended up eventually grinding the wheel all the way flat. Here's another shot for perspective:

So, that lard-pusher Ben will never let me live this down so long as we're both alive. Oh well - all is good because we are finally home, and I had this waiting for me upon arrival:

One extra week of vacation! Where will I destroy my luggage next?