The Best Hand Dryer in the World (at least in the continental U.S.)

Hand dryers are something that you probably don’t give a lot of thought to. Not in the same way you worry about the coming global financial collapse or “What’s for dinner…tomorrow?” But nothing, speaking for myself, causes as much of a panic with soaking hands as an old-fashioned hand dryer. Especially if it is one of those old-fashioned hand dryers with “motion sensor” technology, like in the Cleveland Airport, where I have to sit there and wave my hands in front of it a million times for it to turn on, only to get a little airflow that is just marginally better for drying my hands than the act of waving them around. I hate them, they are the worst.

I take that back. The worst is a compound situation, like in the Denver airport. There they have motion sensor paper towel machines as well as hand dryers. So like any sane person, you go to the paper towels first and wave your hands for half an hour until you realize, it is just an empty shell of a machine that doesn’t actually dispense anything. It is there merely to give a sense of superiority to the schlub next to you using the hand dryer, who just did what you did, but still feels the need to say, “There aren’t any paper towels in there.” So you have to resort to either starting over on the hand dryer or wiping your hands on your pants (and if you are me, you only have one pair of uniform pants that you wear weeks on end without washing…who am I kidding? Months on end.)

Now if you have been into a modern public bathroom in the last ten years, you have noticed the emergence of a new generation of hand dryers. Turbo dryers that force airflow at hypersonic speed that actually dry your hands. I would even go out on a limb and say that they dry your hands nearly as fast as a paper towel (which I find ironic: they had to resort to a jet engine or a midget behind the wall with an industrial compressor, I don’t claim to be an engineer, only to ALMOST equal a paper towel.)I find these new hand dryers as one of the greatest innovations of the twenty-first century, just below the smart phone and way above Twitter. I could be in a third world country (or Paducah Kentucky), suffering from typhoid, turn around and see a modern hand dryer and know that “it’s going to be all right.”

So you can imagine my pure elation to finally understand what C.S. Lewis meant to be “surprised by joy”, when I turned around recently at the Kansas City airport to find the best hand dryer in the entire world. It happens to be an “Xlerator”. It’s located in the men’s bathroom, in terminal C, near gate 67. You may scoff at my exuberance, but I can assure you this hand dryer is better than any hand dryer you have experienced anywhere (unless you are some sort of king or prince that has an army of scantily clad women to hand dry your hands, that would be better, but only marginally.)

If you know of new technology hand dryers, you know there are two kinds: The Dyson made, Airblade and the Xlerator. Dyson, of course, is the company that makes those awesome vacuum cleaners that generate small weather systems and cost more than the Blue Book value of my ’96 Isuzu Rodeo. Xlerator appears to specialize in hand dryers. (It took me awhile, but to read the name correctly you have to read the “x” and the “l” individually. Then it is clever, not meaningless and unpronounceable).

Both hand dryers are vast improvements over the old style. I secretly love each of them. You’ll find the “Blade”  in the San Francisco airport, where you will also find some condescending literature over the hand dryer on how many trees you are saving by using it. (Side note: I think until they find an alternative to toilet paper and seat covers, the trees are thanking their lucky stars to be turned into paper towels.) I like and hate the “Blade” for the same reason. It cradles your hands on all sides, drying all parts at once. The bad part is that by doing this, it creates a life-size game of “Operation” with your hands (don’t touch the sides or you will get MRSA).

I had to stand by a man peeing to get this picture, he seemed agitated. People get weird when you take out a camera in the bathroom.

The Xcelerator, uses a more conventional, one-hole-for-all-the-air approach, it’s just that airflow is equal to a Boeing-sized wind chamber in a tiny little hand-dryer. But this particular Xcelerator, (Kansas City airport, terminal C, gate 67) is a super-charged model. It looks like every other Xlerator, but somebody with a little bit of pride has gotten under the hood, put a turbo charger and a nitrous tank in it and increased the airflow ten times over the normal Xlerator, and secretly made THE BEST HAND DRYER IN THE WORLD. No hyperbole here, my hands were dry in three to four seconds (although I think if I had left them under for any longer, I may have lost some skin.)

This is it. The one. Doesn’t look like much. Oh how wrong you are.

Ironically, the best hand dryer in the world, is in one of the worst airports for passengers. The reason is, once you are through security, they lock you up in individual pens, like animals, and keep you at your own gate. So even if you are in Kansas City, you may not have the option to go sight-seeing to  C67. You will have to talk to your travel agent (I highly recommend buying a ticket solely for this reason) and make sure you insist, “No. I don’t just want to go to Kansas City. I want to go to terminal C, gate 67. Now get to work, you anachronistic relic from a time before internet!” Oh and if you are a lady, you will have to go in drag.

Have a challenge for The Best Hand Dryer Ever? Let me know.