What's in Your Cargo Hold?

I've been a little remiss in blogging lately due to a VACATION! We visited my parents in Florida and happily enjoyed a few of the tourist traps -- Universal Studios, Discovery Cove, and the South Florida Museum. We also hunted for sharks teeth at the beach, and the kids enjoyed quite a bit of pool time. Grandma cooked and squeezed fresh orange juice for us. All the opposite of what we'd be doing back home in Vermont.

While I certainly had time to blog, my head was empty! That alone is evidence of a great vacation. My mind isn't an easy one to escape.

We flew home from Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport late yesterday afternoon. As I was waiting there, I flashed back to the same time last year, at that same airport waiting to fly home. While watching the baggage handlers load luggage into our plane, a small truck backed up to the conveyor belt. The handlers pulled from the truck two long and large wooden boxes and sent them into the belly of the plane. Bodies.

This caught my attention, to be sure, but there's more to the story...

So the little truck unloads its corpse cargo, pulls away from the plane -- a little too fast -- and another box falls out of the back and onto the pavement. To think of the poor stiff inside being bounced around like that. The driver stops the truck, walks around to the back, and stands there, hands on hips, for probably a full minute trying to decide what to do because he can't reload it alone. Finally, he drives away, leaving the box sitting there in the hot sun, and comes back with another fella who helps him put it back into the truck.

Needless to say, I was a little taken aback -- and completely fascinated in that peculiar way that makes you read books about vampires. Never in my life would I have imagined bodies in my plane's cargo hold. But if you think about it, there are probably quite a few flown out of Florida on any given day. It's not exactly a mecca for young people.

So besides luggage, packages, carseats, an occasional dog, and bodies, I wonder what else might be down there? Would they put live dogs and dead bodies on the same plane? How well packed are the bodies? Are they on ice? Inquiring minds no longer on vacation need to know.

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