War with Iran. Gas prices up. Economy going to hell. Epstein! Is it time to run away yet? Well tomorrow, we do jet away. We’ve been home for all of four days. It is time to get moving again. We are flying South-worst this time. Headed to Boston. Gonna be grandparents for a while. Maren working at MIT has a business trip and we are jumping in to help David take care of the boys. It should be fun. This time we have been fortifying ourselves with vitamin C (Airborne), hoping to stave off the usual daycare crude.

Overshadowing this trip is the partial government shutdown. This time around Congress has decided to pay the air traffic controllers. In past shutdowns their work stoppages have eventually ended the shutdowns. Now I do not know how this one will end. The only other inconvenience is the TSA checkpoint. The powers that be have protected themselves by restoring TSA precheck, ensuring that they may still breeze through security, while the rest of us languish, while endlessly waiting for our turn to be searched.

NPR reported both five-hour and five-minute lines, so it is anyone’s guess what we will get. The agents have already missed one paycheck and will miss another next week, so whatever difficulties we encounter this time, it will be worse on the return. Compounding this concern is that we will then be leaving Boston.

Some airports have taken to suggesting that travelers offer the agents gift cards, to show support and help them make ends meet. I say that cash should work just as well and why not call it what it is, a bribe. In third world countries when officials who are not paid make up for this lack of income, they prey upon the citizenry by demanding baksheesh. This is what we have now under this regime.