I was tempted to just write "me neither" without actually reading the post. Sorry to hear about the health problems ... or perhaps I rather should say, good to hear it's going well despite the health problems.
Airports are stressful environments even without the security theater. My wife is often complaining a lot on me because I'm "wasting time", choosing alternative travel modes whenever possible. But no, that's not "wasting time". If I actually can work on my laptop while travelling, sleep properly while travelling, eat nice meals while travelling ... and maybe most importantly: even relax while travelling, then that's very valuable for me.
With the train it's fairly simple. They have invented a new evil rule that one has to board the train a whopping 20 seconds before the official departure time, but that's manageable - and since I'm frequently travelling through the central train station I'm pretty good at calculating the time needed. It only takes some few minutes plus safety margins (waiting time) from one arrives to the train station until one is comfortably seated in the train. On most train stations, one can follow the passenger all the way to the train and wait directly outside the window all until the train has departured.
Ferries often have a more evil rule that one has to come 15 or 20 minutes before the departure time, and it often takes quite some time from one arrives to the ferry terminal until one has found the cabin or found a comfortable seat in the bar ... sometimes there are queues there also (I think I've found out how to circumvent the queues: going by bike and without heavy luggage - one can sneak past all the cars to the drive-in-checkin, bike directly into the ferry and climb the stairs rather than queuing up for the lifts), but at the other hand the ferry is often ready for boarding more than an hour before departure. One can come with great security margins without having to waste time. Today it's usually not possible to follow passengers all the way ... when I was a child it was possible to follow passengers all the way to the cabin as long as one would be careful to leave the ferry before departure.
Airports? Often they are far away from the city center, one needs to do research on how much time one will need for getting there, and different airports have different standards on how long in advance one is expected to arrive to the airport. One has to queue up for the check-in automat, queue up for the luggage drop, queue up for the security theater, waste time and nerves going through the security theater, perhaps one has some slack time and wants to "relax" with some meal or a drink but it's difficult to relax properly at the airport. One has to waste time searching/running for the gate, wait at the gate, queue up for boarding the plane, queue up inside the plane to get seated ... and forget about being "comfortably" seated, in the airplane one is uncomfortably seated and that's a fact. If a trip by air takes two hours, then for sure some four-five hours are wasted. It's also a great problem that one cannot follow people to the gate anymore. My son (14) was supposed to go to his grandma in the weekend two weeks ago. He was very stressed with it as he didn't really know how to deal with airports (he got lost on arrival last time he was flying alone, as he thought it was needed to go through passport control on arrival). In fact he managed the check-in-automat, the luggage drop, the security control and finding the gate without problems. Something went horribly wrong at the gate though, he did not board the airplane due to some misunderstandings!
And yes, things were much better before. In Oslo the airport was quite central. I decided to rollerblade there once and seriously underestimated the time needed. I rolled all the way to the gate, no security checks, came there just as the plane was fully boarded, just before they closed the gate, in full speed, stopping abruptly at the gate and asking the personnel there: "did I make it in time?". Success!
Once at a small town in the far north-east of Norway long long time ago ... me and a lady was going home. It was half an hour until the plane was to departure, and the lady started stressing ... "shouldn't we get to the airport soon?". The local responded, "relax, relax! It's still half an hour until the plane leaves - you have good time!". At the airport, 15 minutes the departure ... we had small backpacks, we intended to take them as hand luggage. The guy in the ticket sales office said we had plenty of time and suggested we should send our bags as checked-in luggage. But then came the shock: he didn't accept payment cards, only cash - and I only had enough cash for one ticket. While my luggage was checked in, I took a taxi to the center of the town, withdrew money from the ATM, took the taxi back again, threw the money to the guy in the ticket office and hurried to the gate. It was one minute past departure time, and the plane was waiting only for me. The lady at the gate was going to complain a bit that I was wearing roller blades rather than shoes, but glanced quickly at the watch and decided it would be better that I continued rolling onto the tarmac and into the airplane. :-)
Hey, @tobixen.
re: health problems
I think she's doing quite well now, considering she had three hernias, the one she went in for, which was larger, and subsequently the two smaller hernias the surgeon found while poking around. :)
re: timing flights
I don't think we've ever arrived last minute. Maybe once. We did actually miss a flight even though we had about forty minutes before the plane was to leave because we were barely checking in at the airline counter and they were supposedly already boarding. Fortunately, we were able to fly out the next day without any additional expense, but even that wasn't a guarantee, until we were actually on the plane. And we still missed an entire day at our destination, and lost a day's worth of expenses on room and car rental.
I've never ridden by train. There are some modes of transportation that are great over shorter geographical distances, and as you say, due to their central location and the lack of enhanced security measures. Which is odd in an age of surveillance and security. It's almost like they're begging for something to happen, or they're thinking that terrorists only want the big toppling buildings kind of results, when that's clearly not the case.
At any rate, I'm glad there's still some form of transportation outside of your own car that you can use without it going way beyond the inconveniences.
You, though, need to write a book about all your experiences. Seriously. It's amazing the stories you have to tell. :)
Well, I've seen attempts on "securing" train stations and metro stations in Russia and China ... but in practice it doesn't work - and anyway I believe it's more theater to make us feel safe than real security.
I've seen the craziest things in Russia and China ... like an x-ray-scanner for checking luggage where only people who specifically queued up for the scanner got the luggage checked and everyone else could go around.
My son, now 14, he did the most amazing things when he was like 2-3 years old. Like, at a time right after some school terrorism attack in Russia the security on the airports were tightened up quite some notches.
That was the first time ever that I needed to take off ordinary shoes in the security control (I've had to take off boots with too much metal earlier). While the security personnel spent long time on me, my son grew impatient and just ran through the security and the metal detector with jacket and rucksack, metal detector beeping like crazy. Do you think the security personnel cared? Not a bit. He did the same thing in the passport control in China, after we arrived by ferry from Hong Kong. Do you think the passport controllers cared? Not a bit. Did we care? He just ran away from us both times, and we couldn't run after!
I'm in absolute total agreement about it being more theater than security. I might even say it seems to make at least some people feel secure. I'm not at all sure about what government's intent is here, though. I think it's just as much a show of their power and control over us as anything.
If it were meant to make me feel more secure I'd have ways to get through security without being treated like a common thug, which I guess would mean the TSA pre-check you can sign up for online for $85 and then renew every five years. If I flew frequently, it would be worth it. Still doesn't stop them from looking at your stuff even if you don't have to remove certain articles of clothing or show them what liquids you have, or your laptop.
I'm glad your son was actually treated humanely, though it was obviously very disconcerting for you since you couldn't just go get him.
I think it's quite simple; whenever something bad happens, it looks pretty bad if politicians do nothing to prevent it from happening again, it looks much better if they do something. For the politicians it's much more important to get reelected than to make useful regulations.
I think one of the most ridiculous is regulation about lights at cars here in Europe - for safety reasons, the headlights should always be on when the car is in motion, and on all new cars the headlights should automatically be turned on when starting the engine - this sort of makes sense (or, perhaps not, when one has become used to it, it's easy to assume every car without headlights on is parked). At the other hand, according to another regulation, in order to save energy, all new cars should be produced with taillights that turn themselves off automatically if it's daylight. Considering that the taillights probably eats lots less energy than the headlights, and serves the same purpose in the daytime (and also, considering that tailights can be pretty important in fog and blizzards) ... this doesn't make much sense to me.