Adventure #1

So here I sit at my gate... in Harrisburg, PA... and I've already had an adventure. When I went through security, first of all I forgot to take my laptop out of the case... well then my case was all suspicious. I inherited the bag and it already had a broken handle... so I use the strap to carry, no big deal. Apparently, though... there was a big metal bar in there all dislodged that was part of the support for the handle that broke. It definitely looked suspicious. The guards let me through and tried to pull it off, but agreed that I'd probably have issues the rest of my trip. What to do, what to do? I came to my gate and started fooling with it... possibly making the other passengers wonder what the crap I was doing. So, I walked back over to security to play with it more, hoping for some help. And, yay ... 2 security guys ended up helping me dislodge it... they even opened up the confiscated stuff safe and got some pliers out to help... and it worked.... so the lining of my laptop bag is ripped, but hopefully that will be much less of a suspicious issue than this foot long piece of metal was. :) I think people's prayers are already working... because this would probably have been a much bigger issue later on in the trip. So now I wait to board. I haven't even left PA yet, lol.