Just got back from a week-long, work-related trip to Denver.

I don't fly often, and when I do, there's about... mmm... I'd say a 50% chance or so I come in for extra scrutiny in the security line. This is due, I am pretty sure, to the fact that my driver's license has my middle initial on it (which my boarding pass does not and, indeed, no other official documentation aside from my birth certificate ever does) and my picture on it is... less than a perfect likeness.

For this particular trip, I had what I thought was a cunning plan: "Hey! I have an honest-to-god US Passport, the gold standard of personal identification. It has fancy electronics embedded in it and everything and a really excellent headshot that looks exactly like me. I'll bring that, and breeze right through the line."

Except that all four times I passed through security, I ended up getting grilled about my final destination and if I was planning on changing my itinerary midway through the trip to leave the US. When I expressed some bewilderment as to that line of questioning, I was told that it was "rather unusual" for someone who wasn't planning to leave the country to carry their passport, and that it "called attention to me."

You can't win for losing sometimes.

-Merc
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