Travel tip #1--Art Appreciation is in the eye of the beholder

I try to be careful on flights and follow all the rules. As a meeting planner, that whole "no Xacto knives" thing is harder for me than your standard business traveller, but I cope. When possible, I ship most stuff out ahead with the meeting boxes to avoid hauling a lot of crud through the airport, and so on.

BUT...when on travel, I try to buy something for the kids. This time, in Scottsdale, Arizona, I managed to find some cute little "southwestern style" pottery statues--a medicine bear for my son, and a running horse for my daughter. Kinda fragile, so they went into my carry on. Which then went through the security scanner. And through the security scanner. And through the security scanner. Other large security guys were called to the station, and it went back through the security scanner. I'm standing there wracking my brains thinking, "no...all the scissors and box cutters are in the box at the hotel getting shipped back to the office", and coming up with NOTHING for possiblities of trouble.

Sure enough...they pull me over to a table on the side and start unpacking the carry on. Luckily, not much was in it. They come to the wrapped/bubblewrapped/taped statues--and wipe them down with one of those explosive testing swabs. Negative. Then the unwrapping starts. No problem with the bear...then he opens the horse. The running horse. The running horse who's movement is signified by the LONG SWIGGLY COPPER WIRES used to form the flowing, wind-blown mane and tail. I just flinched when I realized what it must have looked like on the X-Ray picture. *sigh*

BAD pony. Bad!

I guess that means I have a clean conscious, cuz it NEVER occurred to me what it could look like when I was carefully packing it in my carryon.