In search of greener pastures and trying not to spend the whole time watching my feet just in case.

[seryn]

I've been browsing local B&Bs for a short trip. I found 3 regions of interest. Best part is that many of these places are having deals. The current top choice is half off. Another choice is half off in November. The third choice got vetoed because it was near our favorite pumpkin farm and as corrvin says, "Organic shouldn't mean inconvenient." I get why tiny little farmlets have limited hours and limited stock, but I get really tired of places selling stuff which require appointments.

-----

I've also gotten "approval" for booking the trip to Maui. This is completely contingent upon whether the local airport with the non-stop flight is doing body scans (not sure how you tell). And it's waiting hotel approval. SO is drag-arse about the trip anyway, and I don't travel well, so it seems like I need to get him invested in some aspect or it will absolutely suck.

My hotel choice is based largely on the Oyster.com information. I also picked the most expensive place. Everyone likes the Four Seasons. I'm not sure I'm a FS kind of woman. I mean I've got leg stubble... It is, surprisingly, not very much more expensive than other Maui hotels, though it's difficult to compare directly. Other hotels have specials. The FS never does. The FS doesn't charge a resort fee. Other places charge up to $50/day. Some of the hotels charge for parking. Some don't. Nowhere has included breakfast. And the hotels have zero interest in giving you an actual bottom line, tax-included total.

-------

Maybe the mini trip-ette idea will fail completely and we'll never want to go anywhere ever again. If I'm going to have a sixth trip in a row completely bomb, I'd rather it be a $200 B&B "weekend" than a $5K Maui trip.

Comments

[sciarra]

All airports local to you now have body scanners, but you always have the right to refuse and then they will wand you or pat you down. My experience so far has been that not every line or every passenger gets sent through the scan, as they don't have enough to do everyone. I'm not sure how that plays out in your area.

[seryn]

I wasn't aware you could refuse. I've only seen stories where a modest woman refuses and is denied at security, but the airline will not refund her money. I already hate to fly because I get patted down due to bras with metal bits. It's horrible.

Since the scans are visually invasive and the government stores that data forever, it's not a viable choice. [The government promises they're not storing the data, the data cannot be stored, there's no possible way... then earlier this year it was proven they had been storing it all... and there's no reason not to keep it once they have it.]

Plus they still wave strollers through without even glancing at the contents, so until they stop that, there is no way scanning everyone else's body will make a difference. (Not to mention that just bringing a baby onto a plane terrorizes all the other passengers who are dreading when the damned thing will go off. And that's without there being any sort of nefarious devices.)

One of my fears turns out to be unfounded. I assumed that these scanners would detect metal and foreign objects within the body. Many kinds of female sterilization involve foreign objects. Tubal ligations with clips or bands for example. Then there are IUDs. We're already a mere skip&jump from banning contraception entirely--- the hop part came from provisions in the new health insurance bill saying that federal money cannot be used for contraceptives--- and the government makes retroactive laws all the time. Life insurance companies hold smoking against people even if they stopped when the Surgeon General warnings were first put on the packages. So I think it would be incredibly dangerous to have scans which detect sterilization. Obviously that concern was pure paranoia from these scanners.

But if the full body scanners don't even detect tampons, how can they possibly be effective? It's a useless invasion of privacy that only catches morons. Then you have to wonder why they have to screen everyone.