travel in the time of swine flu

As we sat in the terminal waiting to board our stage coach in the sky en route to paradise last week, DanO and I (along with the rest of the passengers on our flight) watched in horror as the Vice President of this great, resilient, not-easily-frightened country full of brave, rational citizens told everyone to STAY HOME FORTHELOVEOFGOD. DON’T TRAVEL, AND BE AFRAID. BE VERY, VERY AFRAID.Aw, thanks for the sound advice, Joe ‘Footinyourmouth’ Biden. Fear monger much?Shortly after that wise, well-founded governmental decree, I felt that itch. The undeniable one that will surface no matter how you try to squelch it.I sneezed. So help me, I sneezed in an airport and I’m pretty sure the world almost ended.The stares! The glares! The disgust on people’s faces!I must have slept through Biden’s other press conference announcing that sneezing was being added to the axis of evil because HOLY CRAP that reaction seemed unwarranted.Folks. Chill. It was just a well-contained, kleenex-covered, high-pitched, girly sneeze. If you’ve heard one of mine, you’d agree: they are undeniably feminine and dainty and definitely not pandemic-spreading. You should hear DanO’s, on the other hand. I’m already saving up for the nasal reconstructive surgery he will need before his 35th birthday.Other effects of the swine flu we observed while (GASP!) traveling:The African Hogs were “resting” rather than being out on display in Disney’s Animal Kingdom petting zoo. Although there was no reference as to why, we all knew. (Would an ‘unclean’ joke here be inappropriate and culturally insensitive? Dang.)Disney World usually has this fancy end-of-days technology where you touch a scanner and it associates your finger print with your ticket so that you can’t cheat the (overpriced) system, but it has been discontinued “for health and safety purposes”.Two face masks were seen on people at the Cleveland Airport.The Orlando news station was consumed with hysteria. A local private school announced it’s closure for a week while we were there, and that was pretty much the only news we got the whole trip.Oh, and there was one small news blurb about how the CDC announced that “JK! It’s not going to be as bad as we thought!”…but they didn’t really go over that story much.