Had to ship my pack in a big card board box on the flight out here.    Used nearly a whole role of strapping tape to make sure it was securely fastened.    Went to check it through as baggage and was demanded by security personnel to declare what was in it.    (flying with a one-way ticket)   So I told the woman there was a backpack, sleeping bag, clothes, etc.   -- Did I have a stove?    Yes, I do.    YOU HAVE A STOVE?!?!?!      STOVES ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.  
Immediately I start to back track.   Well, yes, it's kind of like a stove, but it's not a real stove.   Not a stove, stove.    No fuel.   Doesn't have a canister.   Couldn't possibly present any risk.  I say.
  
So I am required to open my box and am demanded to show them the suspected stove.     I plunge in, rummage around and emerge with -- my titanium pot -- and hand it over.    Mind you, I never affirmatively said that the titanium pot was a stove.   That was their assumption.  

The woman disappears with my pot for a long time.   I start to get nervous.    Have to catch my plane.   People are standing in line behind me.  

She finally comes back, broadly smiling, and informs me that my "stove" is not the kind that is on their list and that I may check it through with my luggage.     (I am not making any of this up)    She asks me about my travel plans.   When I tell her I am going to hike the PCT she asks if it is something that I have always wanted to do and I allow that it is.  

She then proceeds to tell me that playing the banjo has always been on her bucket list and that she has started to take banjo lessons and we begin a conversation about her love of the banjo and her banjo playing.    

All of a sudden she ceases to be the adversary and I see her as a merely another human being.