I thought that in the wake of the London bombings we'd be at Triple Red Alert or something. My vision was that the instant a somebody dropped buttpack on the floor, SWAT teams would stream in with bomb-sniffing dogs and a big robot that would encase the possible bomb in a metal blast box.

Well, I hate to spoil it for you, but it doesn't happen that way. Not even close.

Grace and I took her friend Olivia to SFO the other night. On the way to the gate, I saw a large, very full backpack sitting on the middle of the floor.

I mentioned this to an official-looking guy nearby. It should have been unnecessary since the bag was plainly within his view and there weren't too many people around. He gave me a weird look, a look at the bag, another look at me, and then got on his walkie talkie.

We were killing time and I decided to wait for the SWAT team and the robot to show up. I'm not a particularly paranoid person, and I thought it was really unlikely that there was a bomb in there. But we took cover behind a nearby column, just in case.

The walkie talkie guy went out to take a look at the bag...

...but then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he took cover behind this sign while a little girl started dancing nearby:

5 minutes passed, then 10. After 12 minutes, a lone cop showed up and stood by the bag. It's not clear how much good that would have done if it had in fact been full of C4.

Another 5 minutes passed, and finally another cop with a bomb-sniffing dog came. The dog gave the all-clear, the cops rifled through the bag for 5 more minutes, and soon it was all over.

All told, it took over 25 minutes for the bag to be removed. And who knows how long it had been sitting there before I saw it? So much for heightened security. At least they brought a dog.