Friday, June 03, 2011

Sooner Con Pre Game Madness!

Well, this weekend is Soonercon, which I'd been looking forward to for months. Had everything figured out. I'd drive myself to Lovefield, indulge in something sweet, get on the plane, get to Oklahoma City early enough to have loads of time to get myself set up at the hotel and get a bunch of little things done before my first panel at 3PM.

Well, as they say...the best laid plans...

Southwest flight made great time. Flight was mostly empty so everyone had plenty of elbow room. Life was good. Then we landed, and captain's voice came over the intercom.

"We've just been informed that an unattended bag has been found in the terminal and that part of the airport has been locked down and evacuated. So while we've arrived, we're not being allowed to deplane."

Definitely not your usual intercom announcement. So we sat and waited. The bomb squad was enroute from downtown. The Southwest staff served us more drinks and that's when the captain got on the com again. We'd been given the option to deplane as long as we proceeded quickly to another wing of the terminal with the food court but couldn't leave even if we had no baggage. (I did so it was moot either way for me.)

We got off and got waved down the hallway by TSA employees and police. Made the turn and there's a sea of people all behind a line. I wiggled through and after taking care of the necessities, went down to a farther area with seats. The flight on the gate across from me was suppposed to leave then but they were stuck as well.

After being there a while (main reason I try not to go anywhere without a book!) we got a new annoucement. In some ways it was so ludicrous it cracked me up.

"The police are following protocol and will be dealing with the problem presently. If you hear any loud sounds, do not be alarmed!"

She repeated this several times. I know that for some items they place them out of harm's way and then purposely blow them up, but it was the fact they weren't willing to explain what they were doing that pretty much made it sound worse than it should have.

After about 3 hours total, we finally got the all clear. I've never seen the baggage turnstyles move so fast! Took a lot longer though to get transportation out of there. They'd turned away all traffic during the crisis.

Fnally got to share a shuttle to the hotel. That was fun as the gentleman next to me was also goign to Sooner Con and had some great stories about his one other encounter with a possible bomb.

Totally had to change gears once I got to the hotel. Now the morning seems like it never happened. Not after the excitement of seeing all the great people at the convention and the charged Supernatural panel. Heh heh. Now just trying not to crash and burn. :P

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