I've landed in DC on the same day as the Glenn Beck rally...I hope he doesn't get the wrong idea.

As proof of my previous claim that TSA doesn't give a flying eff about your liquids, allow me to list all the liquidy items I just snuck through security: at least one tube of lip gloss, a tube of mascara, contacts in lens solution, a medium size tube of face lotion, and two 2-shot mini bottles of flavored vodka. As to why I have mini bottles of flavored vodka in my toiletry bag, well, I can't really think of a better place to keep them, and I suppose the same way some people have a spare toothbrush in their carry-on, vodka could always count as necessary supplies in the event of a flight delay emergency. Though on my list of terrible situations to be in, "drunk at an airport" falls right between "delayed at an airport" and "hungover at an airport."

Correction. "Salvador Dalai Llama Farm." So now we're punning both a famous surrealist and His Holiness for the sake of llama farming.

A guy sitting in the food court at Indianapolis Int'l Airport has a jacket that says "Salvador Dali Llama Farm" on the back of it.

My entire life for fall semester

...packed into a carry-on backpack, a carry-on tote, a large 49.8lb suitcase and a smaller 30.4lb one. I depart Indy for Syracuse by way of Dulles at 10:0something tomorrow morning.

Is there a world championship for professional luggage packing?

Warning Signs of a Novice Flier

There are a few perks to being a frequent flier beyond the free airline miles. For example, you learn to always take the business traveler lane when you go through security, even if you're wearing flip flops and a Hawaiian shirt, bringing a beach towel and water wings as a carry-on, and your boarding pass clearly states you're departing for Grand Cayman at 10:36am from gate A21. Yes, traveling as a frequent flier is fast, easy, and since you've already been through every type of crisis the airlines can think to throw at you (delayed flights, long waits on the runway, broken airplane bathrooms, lost luggage, flight attendants running out of cran-apple juice), there's nothing that you can't shrug off. Except for one thing. Only one thing can throw a wrench in the well-oiled operations of your getting-from-point-A-to-point-B machine: the novice flier.

Novice fliers are the single worst threat to smooth traveling. The inexperienced traveler is slow, confused, overly-cautious, high-strung, stressed out, and not going to do anything correctly on the first try. One major study* suggest up to 47% of travel frustrations are caused by novice fliers, with the remaining 53% being comprised of canceled flights, unnecessarily long layovers, having to sit in the middle seat, and the abridged menu common at airport fast food joints. Woe is the traveler stuck behind, next to, around, or [insert choice preposition here] a novice flier. Luckily, however, this menace to your traveling comfort is easy to spot and, subsequently, to avoid. Just watch our for these telltale warning signs.

At Check-In

• The novice flier will always arrive two hours early for domestic flights and three hours early for international ones. The frequent flier knows that despite TSA recommendations, one hour will get you through check-in and security with plenty of time to pick up a muffin at Starbucks before you board, unless you happen to be traveling from a major airport during a peak travel holiday. Frequent fliers also know that even if you do miscalculate and lines are longer than expected, waving your ticket at an agent will instantly get you bumped to the front of any line.

• The novice flier will have checked in and printed his boarding pass at home. Because in the mind of the novice flier, check-in lines are really long so you need to be as prepared as possible before you get to the airport. You only have two hours to get to the gate, after all.

At Security

• The novice flier will fret about regulations and go to painstaking lengths to meet them. Even a novice flier knows airports have security and restrict what can and cannot go on the plane. Unlike frequent fliers, however, novice fliers think these regulations must actually be obeyed. False. Do whatever you want with your liquids. While even the most inept TSA agent will catch a two-liter of Coke in your backpack, almost anything else will get through without a problem. I usually put my travel liquids in a baggie just in case I get stuck with an over-zealous TSA-er, but unless I'm in a generous mood I almost never take my baggie out of my suitcase and place it in the tray. Laptops are fifty-fifty; you'll probably get caught, but the TSA-er won't bother to actually take it out or re-scan your luggage. TSA-ers work long hours at an exceedingly boring job and, especially at small airports, are pretty lax with enforcement. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten jumbo bottles of hair gel or full-size tubes of toothpaste through security; my father once forget he had a pocket knife on his keychain and even got that through. JFK did take away my unopened jar of crunchy peanut butter once, though, resulting in a thoroughly unpleasant layover in Seoul when all I had to snack on was dry Saltines.

• The novice flier will be slow and probably ask you to pass him a bin when he's halfway down the line. I use exactly one bin; two if I'm carrying a pillow or something else I didn't bother to cram in my carry-on. A novice has no idea how many trays he needs and will probably use far more than necessary because he thinks all his bags need one (nope—bags go directly on the conveyor). A frequent flier can also remove shoes, laptop, and liquids (if she's generous enough to bother) in about forty-five seconds without pausing to hold up the line, and then do the same in reverse on the other side of the x-ray machine. A novice stands there like an idiot, blocking the conveyor and taking his sweet damn time.

At The Gate

• The novice flier will be the first in line. If you're first in line, that just means you'll stand in line the longest. Stay sitting as long as possible—or better yet, go check out the massage chairs at Brookstone until about ten minutes after your designated boarding time. Basically, you can wait on the cramped plane, or you can wait in the airport (just make sure you're already checked in). A novice flier thinks he needs to be the first one on to get overhead space. A frequent flier knows she'll always have under-the-seat storage and her seat's already reserved; in the event of an overhead shortage, the flight attendant will gate-check your bag free of risk and charge, anyway.

• The novice flier will board with his zone. Don't board with your zone. Board whenever you feel like boarding. Board with the first class if you want and enjoy your economy seat while you watch the plane fill up. Though personally, I prefer Brookstone.

On The Plane

• The novice flier will listen to the flight attendants give their schpiel. If he's super-novice, he'll follow along on the safety card. A frequent flier has heard it all before and knows none of it matters cause if the plane goes down, we're all dead anyway.

• The novice flier will turn off his electronic devices. Please. I haven't turned off my cell phone on a plane since I was sixteen. If it were actually a threat, TSA wouldn't let you bring your iPhone on board. In the rare event something is messing with communications after the cabin door has closed, they make an announcement. I regularly have my iPod playing from the moment I step on the plane til the moment I step off. It's not a problem unless you get caught.

• The novice flier will ask what drinks are available. My default complimentary drink order (except on the lucky international flights with free beer and wine) is Minute Main cran-apple cocktail. Deliciously refreshing and perfectly masks the double shot of vodka I tipped in there when the flight attendant wasn't looking (what did you think I had in my liquids baggie? Shampoo?).

• The novice flier will strike up a conversation with his seatmate. Fuck you, novice flier, I'm trying to read my Stieg Larsson novel and there's a reason I'm still wearing my headphones after the cabin doors have shut.

• The novice flier may try to retrieve something from the overhead compartment during the flight. If you didn't have the foresight to put it under your seat, you don't deserve to have it til we land. Stuff in the overhead shifts in flight, and every time Mr Novice Flier tries to retrieve his toothbrush or his neck pillow from his suitcase in the overhead, I have terrible “Lost” flashbacks to Kate's federal marshal getting conked on the head by a flying suitcase when the overhead busts open as 815 hits turbulence.

At Immigration

• The novice international flier will actually be honest on his customs form and declare what he needs to declare. Rookie mistake. I don't care if you clearly have a live wild tiger with mad cow disease stuffed in your suitcase—never declare anything. Never.

Other Warning Signs

• The novice flier will dress a bit too comfortably. Especially true on international flights—if he's wearing sweatpants, slippers, and a pajama tops, I guarantee he doesn't fly too often. The logic is simple: he finds the cramped conditions on an eight-hour flight to Heathrow uncomfortable because he's not used to them. To the frequent flier, a trip like JFK-Heathrow is no more uncomfortable than anything else you might do in a day. Besides that, Stacey London is right: you never know who's going to sit next to you on a plane, and it's your loss if you meet a potential employer or soul mate when you're in your jammy-jams and two-inch thick eye glasses. First impression fail.

• The novice flier will be traveling with children. That's not to say every novice flier travels with children, just that no matter how much you flew in your pre-parent life, when you show up at the airport with infant-in-arms, I instantly demote you to novice flier status because the child is a novice flier and you're responsible for the child. I think we all know the sort of horror that results from the equation {child^number of children/[10(combined age in months of children under ten) + 5)combined age in months of children over ten)} + airport(stress level of parents). Needless to say, avoid traveling families at all costs.

Unfortunately, the only way to avoid novice fliers is to charter a private jet—though flying business class might help cut the frequency of encounters if you're lucky enough to have a corporate expense account to pay for such a thing. A more empathetic (read: less traveled) individual might advise you to treat the novice flier with kindness and understanding, remembering that you, too, were once nervously fidgeting while having your bags checked on your first time through security. I, however, don't have time for that sort of advice—I've got a plane to catch.

*which was conducted by me, meaning I made the whole thing up but wholeheartedly expect these results if this study were ever actually conducted.

Minus the planes and trains

The environmentally alarmingly large portion of the time I spend in transit is on airplanes; actually, I drive so rarely that I don't generally recommend ever getting in a car when I'm driving. Today is at least partially an exception, because while I'm not driving myself, I am nevertheless being driven--my family is taking a casual six-hour roadtrip to the Buckeye State to help move my little sister into her dorm as she begins her first year of college. Yeah, that's weird, my little sister going to college, but far more bizarre is having to spend six hours covering a distance a plane could do in an hour and a half. Not to mention the added irritation of my laptop being out of battery and I don't even have a layover during which to charge it.

At least I have a window seat

Sitting on the runway at Memphis, and I'm trapped next to a brightly colored woman who doesn't quite fit within the confines of a standard size airplane seat. What fun.

Ghetto plane

Despite the fact not even half the seats were occupied, they still made everyone gate check their luggage. Yeah. Everyone.

Once again, in transit

Lubbock's Preston Smith airport is sort of like that weird old diner on the corner where the parking lot is always empty, the neon sign has a few letters permanently burned out, the whole thing looks ready to collapse and you don't know anyone who has ever eaten there but somehow it still stays in business.

But seriously, I showed up for this flight about three minutes before it started boarding and it took me maybe forty-five seconds to get through security. How is this even an airport? And more importantly, who the hell would ever want to go to Lubbock anyway?

You know how I know I'm in Texas?

...There were at least two men at my gate wearing cowboy hats.

Unrelated: the man sitting next to me on the plane is reading the first of Stieg Larsson's Milennium trilogy; I'm reading the third.

On the ground in Houston

I spent most of my Indy-Houston flight scribbling a manifesto about the evils of inexperienced travelers. Suddenly the flight attendant asks me in I'm "journaling." What do you even say to a question like that? I made non-committal noises and tried to acknowledge and ignore her all at the same time. Stop reading over my shoulder, airline lady...

We're chillin' on the Tarmac right now; I have about an hour to hang out at the Houston airport before I hop over to exotic Lubbock, TX. I wouldn't recommend a visit to Lubbock.

In other news, the "journaling" flight attendant shorted me on my cran-apple juice.

Regional jet, three seats wide

...There's no row 13.

Texas, y'all

I know I have two weeks of Wales updates left, but right now I'm back in the States and sitting at the Indianapolis airport on my way to visit Boyfriend, and so far the following things have happened:

-I almost got flushed down an automatic toilet
-The world's mullet champion is sitting next to me. Photo to come.
-Excerpts from the conversation of two middle aged men sitting behind me include "Did you sleep together?" "She will never step foot in my house ever again." and "First class, if you have no class, that's where you sit."

More to come as the situation progresses.

The 'Steddfod drained me of the energy to blog

This week is the Eisteddfod and if I ever stop being exhausted I'll write about it. For now, a quick review of last week: I failed at house-sitting on Saturday through Tuesday and potentially neglected the dog because I ended up spending every night at the Fig Tree; Saturday I did the field trip for my architectural salvage article and went to Builth Wells with a guy who is blacklisted from the US cause he was involved in a big counterfeiting ring in Africa about 20 years ago (um...); Sunday I went to a lunch for Sian Phillips and was overdressed, underage and overall embarrassing, though Sian Phillips was lovely and poised and hilarious; Monday I skipped work and wandered around Carmarthen then went to dinner at a pub with my landlords and their future daughter-in-law Beth, during which time I split two bottles of wine with John; Tuesday the magazines were (finally) delivered; Wednesday I discovered it's a good thing I'm not credited on those blurbs because Frances edited them after I wrote them and one is now so full of typos that I refuse to claim it, and I also posted a much prettier version of my Heathrow immigration story on the magazine's Facebook, and my own Facebook, so check that out if you haven't yet; Thursday I went to Aberystwyth and Talybont with Frances to visit Y Lolfa, the publisher that wouldn't hire me, and turns out they're uber-legit; Friday I took the day off; yesterday the 'Steddfod started and will be dominating my life for the next week--we leave before 8am, don't get back til 8pm, and then I pretty much grab some dinner (or ice cream...lately I've been eating Monica's homemade ice cream for dinner...what? it's got egg in it, it's healthy!), wash off the disgusting layer of dust coating me from the filthy Eisteddfod venue, and then go to bed before 10pm.

More about the 'Steddfod later and if I'm in the mood, filling in the gaps of the last week. Four weeks down, two to go!