An incident at the airport

I saw something at the airport yesterday that continues to bother me, even though it shouldn't.

Actually, I saw a snapshot of the incident.

No, I saw a snapshot of the aftermath of the incident.

I wish I could fill in the rest of it. It would put my mind at ease.

I was on my way home from a business trip. It was about 8 p.m. local time, and I was dressed in a suit and tie.

I got off the airplane and was making my way up the concourse towards the train. On the far end of the food court, I noticed a policeman standing there, looking large and menacing and in control, his gaze focused intently on someone in front of him

As I got closer, I saw that the "someone" was sitting on a bench less than 3 feet away from the officer.

As I walked past them, I couldn't keep from staring. The "someone" was a man in his 30s or 40s, slight of build, with well-groomed, dark hair. He was wearing a suit and tie, just like me, so I concluded that he was also traveling on business. He was also on the concourse, which meant that he had a ticket to fly somewhere —  although he could have been returning from somewhere, like me.

I hazarded a closer look. He was sitting crookedly and rather uncomfortably on a bench, and his hands were behind him, so I concluded that he was wearing handcuffs. He was looking at the floor some distance away, and he looked like he was trying really hard not to cry, as if he were very unhappy to be there.

I had places to be, so I kept walking. I tried not to slow down. A few paces beyond that sad tableau, I passed a second policeman, holding the arrestee's ID and saying into his radio "... and the birthdate is oh five, oh six, ..."

It really was none of my business, but it's hard not to watch a train wreck. Part of my brain kept chewing on what I had seen. In no particular order, these are the thoughts that passed through my brain:

He's going to miss his flight. He's going to spend the night in jail. Somebody's going to have to fly out here, from somewhere else, to bail him out.

What did he do? It must have been pretty bad, and/or it must have unfolded over time, because policemen don't magically appear in a food court on an airport concourse. Maybe one of the food court employees called the police while it was happening.

Had the guy been drunk? Abusive? Irrational? Is that why they called the police on him? He was wearing a suit, so he wasn't just some rowdy tourist. He was a businessman, traveling on business.

Or was he disruptive on an airplane, and the flight crew called ahead, so he was arrested when he disembarked? I doubt this, because I would expect that arrest to happen near the boarding gate, not in the food court.

Oh, that sad look on his face. It breaks my heart. Whatever happened, his business trip sure didn't end the way he expected it to.

I wonder what will happen when he gets home? And I wonder what other pieces of his life will fall apart, as a result of this incident?

Someone at Google Maps is pulling my leg

I recently went to maps.google.com, looking for directions from Denver International Airport to a location in Northglenn, a suburb on the north edge of Denver. Getting out of DIA is simple: follow Peña Boulevard to I-70.

Not according to Google Maps.

This first picture is the Big Picture of the route from DIA to Northglenn. I didn't know civilians could get into DIA from the north, and it never crossed my mind that DIA is surrounded by aviation-related businesses that do not use Peña Blvd for access. (You may need to click on the map to see the whole thing.)


The second picture is a satellite view of DIA and the starting point.



The third picture is a close-up of the starting point. That white building is not a tiny building. The taxiway leading into the building is wider than the largest passenger jet, and the parking lot north of the building is full of cars, too tiny to see at this resolution. But it's not the passenger terminal.



I didn't think it was this easy to drive onto the airport. I had assumed that, post-nine-eleven, major airports like this would be sewn up tighter than a wineskin. Maybe I should try to drive this route and see who I encounter.

Oh, there's an interesting note on the runway there: "Continental Airlines Flight 1404." No, Google Maps is not marking the current positions of flights on the runways. (I think there are other websites for that.) Continental 1404 had a little accident at DIA just before Christmas 2008. You can read about it on Wikipedia.