Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
I would like to put forward the theory that massive gravity wells form in airports, centred on active luggage conveyor belts. Unlike more stable gravitational centres such as planets or black holes, these airport-specific gravity sources seem to form leading up to a given belt becoming active and populated with luggage, and gradually recede in force as luggage is removed. This results in people being able to overcome the attractive force and wander off in a selection of almost random routes, statistically weighted heavily towards meandering through the most inappropriate and legally invalid customs channel.
I can only perceive this gravitational force by observation of the effects it has on surrounding objects. A halted baggage carousel will be devoid of surrounding people up until the point at which some helpful airport staff-member announces that there is the merest hint of probability that your baggage may emerge from said machine. This seems to activate the gravity well generator. Adults and small children flock to the belt. In some airports they have been forward thinking enough to draw a line about half a metre outside the belt, to try and make people stand back - but this appears to be merely ornamental in any practical sense. Despite the best efforts of the alighted waiting passengers, the gravitational forces drag small children, adults, airport trolleys, buggies, bags, handbags, sporting equipment, pets, boxes and all manner of other paraphenalia right to the edge of the carousel. This provides a tremendously entertaining obstact course to be negotiatied as one tries to remove one's luggage from the moving belt. That's if you can see the bags on belt or can muscle your way in to close enough to the belt to claim your property as it slides gracelessly by.
We know that gravitational force exerted is proportional to the mass surrounding the theoretical centre of gravity. This seems to fall down in the case of baggage belts since the additional mass of lots of heavy bags, people attracted and various miscellaneous objects falls woefully short of the requirement to exert such a perceived force. I, personally, have never been inexorably pulled to stand right next to a carousel, leaving no room for anyone else to see their luggage, much less have any glimmer of hope that they might be able to reach it in time or even remove it. Perhaps the gravity is selective in some may?
Some readers may think my theory somewhat flawed - but I've thought about this long and hard (well, the bones of 10 minutes) and the only other conceivable explanation I can come up is that people collecting their baggage at airports are idiots. They are devoid of clue and hell bent on making life for themselves and everyone else more difficult. I'm sure that can't be the case...
posted at: 13:58 | path: | permanent link to this entry
