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FROM CUSCO, PERU

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An LAX Story: Racial, Class Harassment?

MIAMI, Florida, May 29 - Well, here I am now, near the Florida Everglades, having crossed one ocean and one continent before getting to Miami enroute to Peru.  I wrote the following story aboard my LA-Miami flight.  Enjoy, or perhaps more appropriately, contemplate its significance...

* * *

LOS ANGELES, May 29 – We landed in darkness.  Our scheduled arrival time at LAX was 5:20AM.  I glanced at my altimeter/clock.  It was 4:50AM.  “Hm… we must have had strong tailwinds,” I reflected.

The early arrival bought me unexpected time on the ground for a wake-up shot of coffee at Starbucks.  My scheduled connection to my Miami flight was quite short, only 40 minutes. 

“It’s a legal connection for LAX,” an American Airlines agent explained when I questioned her, looking at my original itinerary some months back.

“Legal connection!” I mused.  “We’ll see…”  My bags were lost for two days on my last year’s trip to Peru, notwithstanding the “legality” of the airlines system.  “Legal connection” simply means that a passenger can get “legally” screwed, i.e., knowingly, with his prior ascent.

After spending just long enough at the AA lounge to send a couple of emails, I headed to the departure gate #45 for my flight to Miami.  The boarding was already under way.  But since AA now has a “priority” line for first class passengers, I went through it and handed my boarding pass to the gate agent.

She looked at me disapprovingly.  “Woe, what’s all this?” she said, pointed at my hand baggage.  “You’re only allowed three items on board.  You’ll have to repackage that.”

I was stunned.  In over 30 years of flying on American Airlines, or for that matter on any other airline, I have been only questioned once about my hang luggage. It was at the London Heathrow Airport two years ago, and at that, by the paranoid British security agent, not an airline employee (see “'Round the World, Again & Again, July 2007).  The British authorities used to allow only one carry-on item.  Yet I was in transit between Germany and India.  So I just stacked one bag on top the other and walked on.

The reason I was taken aback this morning was that I had already done it.  I had put my backpack on top of a small computer bag on wheels.  Taken together, they are smaller than most carry-on cases you see these days.  I was also holding my Gortex ski jacket on that arm.  As you know, I am headed for the 15,000-ft plus elevations in the High Andes.  But I did not feel like wearing it at sea level in Los Angeles.

“But I only have the three items you say are allowed,” I said.  “This is a jacket,” I pointed to Gortex, “not a bag.”

“Sir, I can’t let you go on board until you rearrange things.”

I pretended to rearrange my bags and started to proceed.

“Sir, I cannot let you go on board.  I am going to call the cops.  I am trying to do you a favor.”

“You are going to call the cops?” I repeated, now really astonished by her attitude.  “For what? I thought, but did not say out loud.  “For not wearing my jacket?  Or for having my backpack on wheels instead of on my back?”

I realized, it was pointless to try to reason with her.  She was evidently on a power trip.  But I was surprised to notice that anger was welling up inside of me.  Even after only a couple of months at the Rainbow Shower, our home in Hawaii, anger has become an unfamiliar feeling. 

“Interesting,” I thought, ordering the anger to go away. 

I put on my ski jacket.  I slung my backpack over my shoulder.  And that is all it took to make me “legal” in the eyes of this AA gate agent.  Then I proceeded to the jet way. 

“Must write a story about it,” I thought as I went on board.  May even write to AA about this type of harassment.  After all, the airline keeps sending me stuff in the mail telling me how much of a ‘valued customer’ I supposedly am as a ‘Platinum’ member of their frequent flying program.

But now that I have had a chance to reflect, I don’t think I will bother with AA.  I no longer wish to waste my energies on negative emotions or on people who seem incorrigible in their rudeness.

But I did want you to be forewarned about acceleration of, what I call, “blue collar revenge” cases.  And of reverse racial and class discrimination.  You see, if I weren’t white, blonde and traveling first class, chances are I would have been quite “legal,” even to that LAX AA gate #45 agent.

Ever since 9/11, however, there has been an increase in incidents of racial and class harassment all over the country.  This is not just a personal observation by a frequent flyer.  It is also based on the feedback I have been getting from some of you, too (see “Terror in the Sky & Readers' Forum (Aug 2007).  But now I am starting to wonder if this incident may not be a precursor of the kinds of “reforms” we can expect under a first black president in history of the United States of America.

For, even after just a few months on the islands, I’ve also noticed a difference in which people treat each other here on mainland.  Many are cold if not downright rude to each other.  The airlines staff, for example, used to be quite jovial in my past experiences, at least in first class.  Now, they wear plastic smiles and hardly ever make eye contact with passengers.  

Sadly, I have seen it all before… in my youth.  As some of you know, I grew up in a communist country.  That’s where people in position of authority treated others like dirt.  And practiced racial and class discrimination.  Acting inhumanely was the norm.  Empathy was something you read about in foreign novels.  Which is why I left almost four decades ago.

Well, when “land of freedom and opportunity,” my beloved adopted country, becomes a place in which an airline gate agent can threaten a “platinum” level customer with cops unless he wore his clothes or carried his bags a certain way, that kind of society is doomed, just like communism was.  So I am sure glad I now live in the middle of the Pacific, surrounded by beautiful nature and caring people. 

Only a few hours into this journey, here I am, longing to get off the mainland, do my shamanic work in Peru, and get back to our home on Maui.  

P.S. By contrast, check out the above photos of the “Aloha farewell” the mainlanders get on Maui as they line up to go through TSA (airport security) screening at Kahului airport.  Hawaiian music and a hula dancer provide a welcome distraction. 

“There is a different group performing every night,” a TSA agent explained when asked about it.  “You should come on Wednesday night,” he added.  “The hula dancer is terrific.  She is really a great entertainer.”

“I am afraid, I don’t book my trips on the basis of airport entertainment quality,” I told him.  “But maybe we can come back on a date and take in the airport concert one Wednesday instead of the Hana Hou,” I joked with Elizabeth, who had come to see me off.

Bagless in Lima, Again

LIMA, Peru, May 30 - Sometimes history does repeat itself.  The only good thing I can say about having arrived in Lima again while my bag was somewhere in the U.S. is that this time around, I had a Plan B.  I had packed an extra backpack with a change of clothes, just for such an eventuality.  Last year, I had to buy a new shirt and underwear in Cusco.

Back then, the culprit was LAN Peru (or so I thought, as they flew me to Lima from Miami).  This year, it was American Airlines.  I chose them hoping to avoid the prior experience.  So what's the difference between airlines?  Nada, it would appear ("nada" = "nothing," for those of you who don't speak Spanish).  They are equally bad.  That would be a logical conclusion.  Logical, yes.  But also wrong.

This afternoon, I called the American Airlines for the third time to find out what happened.  Up until then, they were completely clueless as to my bag's whereabouts.  But a nice Hispanic-speaking lady from Dallas persevered and finally "found' the bag for me.  It was still in Miami.

"In Miami?" I said, sounding incredulous.  "That's unbelievable.  I had a three-hour layover in Miami."

Then I remembered that I also had a long layover last year and still the same thing happened.  And that I had flown into Miami on American Airlines, not LAN Peru.  Maybe in Miami the "legal" connection time for AA is 13 or 30 hours?  Whatever it is, we now know the culprit.  It is the American Airlines Miami baggage handling people.  The AA staff at LAX, a far bigger and busier airport than Miami, had no problems transferring my bag from my Maui flight within less than an hour.  But the Miami AA crews were too busy or uncaring to do it in three.

So as I said to Elizabeth this afternoon, perhaps the lesson the spirits are trying to teach me here is to avoid Miami.  Which won't be a hardship for someone living in Maui.

So what's the latest scoop from Miami?  My bag "might" arrive on the same flight tonight that arrives in Lima around midnight.  Then it "might" be transferred to a LAN Peru flight to Cusco and delivered to my hotel.  No guarantees, of course, that these "mighty might's" would become reality.

And what if the bag isn't here by tomorrow night, my last one in Cusco?  Then I am cooked.  For, that bag has all of my mountain survival gear.  So I thanked the Spirits today for bringing me here again, and for the lesson about avoiding Miami.  But now it's up to them to reunite me with my bag if I am to see them again.  So we'll see what happens...

Lima or Beijing?  Quirky Climate...

Meanwhile, back to Lima, when I woke up this morning and looked out my hotel window, I thought for a moment I was in Beijing.  For, that was the only place in the world where I had seen the air that smoggy (or foggy, take your pick).  Take a look...

Johnny, the driver who took me to the hotel late last night, said that it is always foggy in Lima.  And that it never rains.  "That's why the streets look so dirty," he said.

"It never rains?" I said, full of disbelief.  "Really?"

"No."

He explained that that was because two major Pacific currents, one cold, one warm, merge and mingle just off the coast of Peru in the vicinity of Lima.  They provide a temperate climate year-round.  In addition, the High Andes (mountains) that loom large to the east of the city provide a sort of a shield that blocks the storms from the east.

Well, I had just learned something new.  I had been to many cities that never sleep.  But I have never before visited a city in which it never rains.

But Johnny, my part-time meteorologist-driver wasn't done yet.  "Over here, in Lima, we are entering the winter months.  But it Cusco, it's now springtime."

"Really?" it was my turn again to show disbelief.

"Yes, we have many microclimates."

Back to my morning drive to the airport, I knew about the influence of the Italian culture in Argentina, as evidenced by many beautiful buildings in Buenos Aires.  But I did not know that about Lima.

Check out these 19th century Italian palaces, now museums.

At the Lima airport, the anti-Swine Flu defenses were in evidence everywhere.  Most of the staff, including the flight crews, wore masks.  Well, they did not exactly wear them all the time, as you can see from the left photo, but they had them around their necks.

Remember Masters' #11 & My life? Well, I arrived in Peru yesterday, on a double #11 day (May 29, 2009).  And check out the photo on the right, taken this morning at the Lima airport.  Guess what my Cusco flight number was? #111.  Then guess what our gate number was?  #11.  The scheduled departure time was 11:30.  We took off at 12:11:21 (I have my chronograph/altimeter with me).  So it was a double ace and a blackjack time of departure.

Oh, and by the way, my return flight from Cusco is 38 (i.e., another #11). 

"Coincidences?"  Yeah, right.  There is no such thing as a coincidence, only divine guidance for those who are open to it.  I took it as a special welcome by the spirits. 

Love  Light 

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