A recurring theme when reading BOB accounts is that after a heavy night drinking, a few whiffs of pure oxygen from the oxygen system soon fixed any hangover. While this could also obviously be put down to adrenaline it would appear that ground crew also had the odd whiff (not popular with the pilots for obvious reasons!) Are any combat pilots here willing to admit that this is true? Guy We always made sure that on long deployments our Medic had ample supply of B vitamins (injection type), Cooks had bottled water and the Life Support had extra oxygen cylinder. After a particularly bad bender, we'd stop by the chow line to eat and get extra water, see the doc for shot of B vitamins then visit life support for some time on the oxygen tank if we weren't flying that day. The combination of the three was a 'field cure' for night of romancing the bottle.

If you've been night flying, however, and go to sleep shortly thereafter you can experience severe ear pain as the oxygen comes out of solution and creates a pressure center in the inner ear that doesn't get cleared through normal flexing of the eustachian tubes. That's why pilots always go for several beers after night flying sessions. And *how* you all hated having to do so...

But at least you get to walk around barefoot in the terminal holding up your pants with one hand and your boarding pass, picture ID, all the stuff in your pockets, your computer, your cell phone and your carry-on bag in the other. Try to retain your dignity while you deal with the 85 IQ rent-a-cop who is protecting the flight from a terrorist blonde with a tube of smuggled lip-gloss. Anything that doesn't have an ocean crossing involved is now a road-trip for me. But if it saves the life of even ONE small child....! Think of the children! Won't someone PLEASE think of the children? Poorly thought through and executed security measures are a pet hate of mine, whether it's useless airline security (I've been flying for years with a razor-sharp inch-long knife in my pocket... it's a little Swiss Army job on my keyring and has been through dozens of scans in a jacket pocket unchallenged, then I put the jacket back on - let's see what happens next flight!) or pointless overclassification of documents (a more real and immediate menace for my day job). When a laptop computer is prominently labelled Property of UK MOD and, when booted up, opens to the security encryption (which also warns about the dire penalties for unofficial possession and/or use of the machine), that proves it's a working machine for the snivel serpent carrying it on a US-issued A2 visa, I don't mind the Homeland Security drone earnestly swabbing it for explosives, chemical weapons, biological agents or radionucleides... I just wonder whether anyone, anywhere, is going to do more than just throw that cotton swab straight in the bin.