Traveler’s lament: I gave up my water, why do you still have your lip gloss?

Friday, Aug. 11, 2006 | 7:49 a.m.

I'm flying at 26,000 feet, and I'm annoyed. On this day of hyper homeland security, when airline passengers are being told to give up their liquids, their gels - even lipstick - I'm dying for the bottle of water I left back at the terminal.

And the woman across the aisle is sipping lemonade. Smuggled lemonade!

What's with that?

And she was hardly the exception. The woman next to me says she still had her lip gloss and Chapstick in her purse. Those were supposed to be banned too.

So much for following the rules.

Two hours earlier, I had parked my car in the economy lot at McCarran International Airport and was hustling to make my Southwest flight to Los Angeles. The shuttle driver warned me that the security lines were running four hours long.

"People are walking in the front door and turning around and leaving when they see the lines," the driver told me.

Inside the terminal - near the electronic sign for Blue Man Group - placards warned that passengers would have to surrender all things liquid or pasty.

And I had a decision to make. Do I smuggle my own illegal contraband - a plastic bottle of water - and risk being banned from flying the rest of my life? Or do I give in to The Man?

I follow rules, like the thousands of other travelers this day when alleged terrorists were arrested in London, suspected of a plot to take liquids aboard trans-Atlantic flights and detonate them in midair.

Nobody wanted a catastrophe to rival 9/11, even on a flight between LAS and LAX.

Besides, once on board, I'd have a drink in my hand in no time.

I was through security in 90 minutes and made it to the gate just after the plane's door closed. The gate attendant opened it up to accommodate me and two other delayed passengers.

No sooner had I settled down on my half-full flight when the woman across the aisle began sipping a bottle of water. In her seatback pocket was the lemonade.

On this flight, on this day, they were contraband, and I was ticked. My water was in a metal trash can back at the security gate.

"How did you get those on board?" I said.

She didn't understand me. She was Chinese. It didn't matter. The answer wouldn't have made me any happier.

But it made the wait for my drink seem that much longer.

The woman next to me was cuddling up to "Mockingbird" in hardback when I asked her if she was stressed by Thursday's news.

What news? she said. She hadn't heard what had happened in London. All she knew was that people were asking her to give up her liquids, her suntan lotion, her toothpaste, her deodorant.

"I didn't want to give up my lip gloss or my Chapstick," she said. "So I left them in my purse."

And nobody caught her.

Which led me to consider that it's all about luck.

We know our town is a place of winners and losers. Leaving Las Vegas on Thursday was a tale of the lucky and the unlucky.

Like the Chicago couple who spent their last night in town with a wild, all-night escapade, who happened to tune in to CNN at 3 in the morning in their hotel room.

"We knew it was going to be wild at the airport today, so we came early," she said.

She and her partner, who wore a T-shirt with a British flag - appropriate for the day, I guess - were in line at 11 for a flight leaving at 3. Lucky.

Then, there was the elderly L.A. couple who arrived at their gate just as they closed the door of the plane, late because of the confusion of the day.

"They canceled our earlier flight. So we were trying to get on this one, but the line was so long." Unlucky.

"The terrorists have won," one guy declared to no one in particular. "The inmates are running the asylum."

And at least one woman was sipping illegal lemonade. I never learned how she got it on board.

Lucky, I guess.