This is reassuring. I was in the Stewart B. McKinney train station in Stamford, Connecticut, last evening, waiting for the 7:27 Amtrak back to D.C. I wasn’t nervous about traveling, despite rumbles over the weekend about a possible but unsubstantiated terrorist threat involving trains and subways in the New York City area. (Scoff not, my friends. The Taj Hotel in Mumbai got a warning, albeit a vague one, before last week’s attacks.)
A police officer strutted through the main area with his K-9 partner. They were quite a pair, the officer tall and perfect-postured, the dog lumbering and, well, a touch foggy. The dog looked like a St. Bernard, not the standard choice of K-9 patrol breed. (That would be German Shepherd.) At one point the dog started sniffing a fellow traveler’s knapsack. Save for the dog’s reaction, there was nothing suspicious about the situation. The knapsack sat on the floor, right next to the passenger. His face was relaxed, no shifting eyes or nervous locking of the jaw. The dog on the other hand was quite energized. In no time at all he worked himself up into a forensic version of heat. I thought for sure the police officer was going to give the bag a go-through. Instead, he asked, “You got a dog?” I couldn’t believe my ears. The K-9 patrol officer had given the passenger a perfect K-9 foil. The passenger, a young man, mid-twenties, maybe a grad student, almost certainly not a terrorist, told him, “Yes.” What kind, the officer wanted to know. “A Chihuahua,” the young man answered. Now, this is where I would have gotten suspicious. A Chihuahua? In Connecticut? Do they even allow Chihuahuas in Connecticut? I have never seen a Chihuahua in Connecticut. The two continued to talk, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. It was clear the police officer was not going to examine the passenger’s bag even though this passenger didn’t look like the type who’d own a Chihuahua. Maybe his story made sense. Maybe it was his grandmother’s Chihuahua. But still. A Chihuahua?
Here’s a sweeps for a trip to London, with four nights at The Andaz on Liverpool Street. This is Hyatt’s new hipster hotel. Two will open in New York City “soon” – on Wall Street and on Fifth Avenue and another in Austin. This is a daily entry sweeps, so I’m adding it to the list in the column on the right.
To enter, click HERE. This sweeps closes January 30.