Journey Officially Begun

I just got a spam email asking me if I want to block spam from my email. Oh spammers, how did you track me down in Athens? I’m trying to take a photo of me in this internet café, but can’t seem to connect my camera to this computer. Ah, well.

Kelly and I are safely in Athens after the long journey. All we did when we got in last night was eat and sleep. The sleep part went alright thanks to my little friend melatonin. Dinner was souvlaki from a local café, and it was insanely good. I certainly have never had lamb seasoned quite like that before. I had heard lamb in Greece blows away any in the States, and it’s true.

My dad was nice enough to drive us to Los Angeles for our flight. As we crossed the non-border border check, it struck me: The border control guy waves two lanes of cars by, checking each car’s passengers, basically the color of their skin. I assume suspicious looking Latino’s are questioned to ensure they are in the country legally. Keep in mind, this isn’t at the border, where arguably it seems fair to check everyone coming into the country. This is within our country, where thousands of U.S. Latinos no doubt drive through every day. How can this selective checking go unquestioned, while people cry foul if we use airport screening that flags people who look Middle Eastern, or better yet are shown as nationals of certain countries? The practices both invade the rights of legal, upstanding citizens of America. Regardless of whether you think these screening methods should be used or not, their legality is clearly not defined and enforced uniformly. And personally, if one’s going to be legal and the other not, I’d rather err on the side which helps keep terrorists off planes.

And speaking of terror, I had a thought pop into my head yesterday while I was sleep deprived. A terrorist organization is like a startup company. It lacks all the bureaucracy of a large, inefficient country, and therefore is able to act swiftly and effectively. It has passionate leaders who actually believe in the cause they are trying to achieve, versus the leaders of large countries, who are only interested in doing what furthers their popularity ratings (whether those are represented by poll results or stock prices). It pays crappy, but there is a promise of great fortune once the mission is achieved. And what causes startups to go under? They lose their funding, which is exactly how we’re trying to attack Al Qaeda. Oh, yeah, and we went to war with a country whose people look like the terrorists. I have a mental image of George Bush waving cars at the border check and stopping Iraqis.

And still speaking of terror, Kelly and I retrieved our luggage at the Athens airport, and proceeded to go through customs. Customs in Athens works like this: you get your bags and walk out of the airport. There was not a single effort made to determine what we were bringing into the country. Now this means one of two things. Either they have no customs screening process at the airport, or they do and Kelly and I were able to inadvertently subvert it. Either way, good luck to the Olympic Games Security Division. As for Kelly and I, we’ll be long gone by August 13.

It’s been less than a day, but so far Athens doesn’t seem like quite the craphole I was led to believe it was. Maybe it depends on what part you stay in. Or maybe once we hit the islands, I will agree that Athens was a craphole. Time will tell. And I’ve got plenty of time.