So after narrowly avoiding a New England ice storm, we board an El Al 777 and are finally crossing over the Atlantic. We are somewhere 37,000 ft above the border between Spain and France. I know this because there are these really cool monitors that keep you updated on the planes location and vital stats. I also can tell you that the outside air temp is -79F but for some reason its ferociously hot on the plane.

El Al seems like a pretty good airline. The in-flight meal was excellent. And as I heard they take security very seriously, but the preflight interview was not nearly as rough as I thought it would be. I was totally planning on having my civil rights violated with questions about my religious and political affiliations, but because some important Israelis vouched for us, we flew through it…at least at first.

A few minutes before boarding, I was relaxing in the terminal, trying to tune out the lady on the intercom droning on in Hebrew (which of course I know exactly four words of): blah blah blah blah Philip Hilton blah blah.

I sat up in my chair. “What is this?, I’ve never been paged.” I hurried over to the desk to discover that I had be randomly selected for further screening. I took my carry ons and myself to the specified room behind a black curtain, certain I was about to be “water boarded.” A man with an Israeli accent greeted me and observed, “we saw that you had a jacket, you must bring it here as well”. It was true I had left it in my chair. Interesting that they had seen me, because I had definitely not seen them. In the end, I think it was a mind game or something, because they barely searched me or my stuff. They just made me run around the terminal to different people and offices like I was on a scavenger hunt or something, which might have been fun if the plane wasn’t boarding during the game.

So in the end I made it on the plane with my coworkers, and now I type. I suppose I actually appreciate the extra security, though I think its odd they picked me. I thought being a blonde haired Methodist (the most moderate organization on the planet) from Mississippi would be enough for them to leave me alone.

I remember reading a couple of years ago that one of these planes was taking off somewhere in Africa, and someone shot a missile at it, and the plane shot something at the missile and destroyed it. Of course El Al would not “confirm or deny” if their planes are actually equipped to do something like that, but clearly they are. How cool is that? That’s like Airforce One technology.

Bet Delta can’t do that.