Flight Plans: My prolonged silence over the past few days is the result of my escape from the Gulag also known as the United Kingdom.

As part of a global strategy clearly designed to identify terrorists by creating conditions so onerous that they are the only ones prepared to put up with airport security, the U.K. banned pretty much every item of carry on: no laptops, no iPods, no books—which on a trans-Atlantic flight essentially means either eight hours of staring at the back of some guy’s head or enduring a movie in which Antonio Banderas teaches underprivileged high school kids to dance.

But flights from Brussels are slightly less restrictive. Most important, you can take a laptop on board, which given that the eight hours from Europe to the U.S. are my most productive was a big deal. So I gave up my Virgin ticket and took the Eurostar train to Brussels to catch a flight a day later on which I could actually work. The cost was not insignificant—a Eurostar ticket, a night at the delightful Brussels airport Sheraton, and a ticket on a major U.S. carrier—but worth it for the added productivity.

Or it would have been, until my laptop imploded at the Sheraton, and all I could get was a message telling me that I had a boot error. So no computer and no work, though at least I was allowed to read. Then, when I made it home I had to wait for my IT guy to come rescue the contents of my hard drive before I could get any work done.

Anyway, it would not have helped with the laptop problem, but I am so ready for someone to launch a no-security airline. I would happily pay an additional $1000 or so per trans-Atlantic flight for an airline that didn’t wait me stand in line for half an hour, take off my shoes and belt, start up my laptop, surrender my iPod and generally inconvenience me in an effort to persuade me that all of that will somehow make me safer.

I don’t believe it for a second and in any case, for me personally, the trade-off isn’t worth it. I’d rather take my chances with the bomb-making whackos.