Day 1 - The Cursed Travelers

You know, I used to look at airports and get all excited and jittery thinking about the prospect of climbing onto an airplane that would take me off to new adventures. The only thing I ever dreaded was going through security, but even that didn't scare me to much until they bring in the dogs. It's never good when they bring in the sniffing dogs.

Now, I walk into the airport and brace myself for the inevitable news that something has gone wrong with at least one flight we are supposed to ride on. Our most recent trip did not let me down either.

It all started when we went to check in at those handy-dandy self-check in kiosks (man, I love that word! I could say it over and over again. Kiosk, kiosk, kiosk...fun!) Much to our dismay we get a message similar to this,

"I'm sorry you are flying United. Your flight is running 55 minutes late so we're gonna try to make the rest of your airport experience for the day as stressful as possible. Oh, you want to go to Montana do you?! Muwahahaha. That's very funny! We laugh in your face! You most likely aren't gonna make your next connection. That's too bad for you. Go on up to the line ahead and wait and a person can help you fly there within the next week so you only get 2 days of vacation instead of 7."

It went something like that, as I recall.

We went up to the desk and the kind lady (she really was...she might have been new.) confirmed what the kind kiosk told us. She informed us we could try again tomorrow, but there were no guarantees. My husband, my knight in shining armor, who doesn't take, "come back tomorrow" as an answer informs the kind lady that we will take the risk of missing our flight in Denver and our luggage most definitely not making it on our flight and arriving on the next. So, we check in and even make it through security without dogs sniffing us.

At this point we decide no more United for us. The rest of the day solidifies this wise choice of ours.

We sit and wait in the Wichita airport...in case you have never been blessed to fly out of the Wichita airport, there is NOTHING to do in this airport. Sitting is your only option. This wouldn't have been quite so bad if it would have happened in say, Dallas, Chicago, or at least an airport with moving sidewalks or escalators where we could ride them for hours on end. We are then informed why we are late. Apparently the plane we are supposed to be on got delayed an hour and twenty minutes out of Houston because of mechanical problems. I hate when they say that. It doesn't phase Doug because his plane always has mechanical problems. I like my planes to work when they are in the sky. They then tell us it will be delayed another 15 minutes because it hadn't even left Denver yet. When it finally gets here we are told we can't board for another 20 minutes because Denver has bad weather and they have grounded all flights going in and leaving.

This is another point when having a husband who is a pilot comes in handy. He pulls out his phone and looks up some aviation weather site where everything is in a secret code. Come to find out there is nothing wrong around Denver. This is also confirmed by other passengers who call friends in Denver who say, "The weather is fine! Crazy United people!"

We finally board and leave about 2 hours after we were supposed to. Surprisingly we land in Denver and miss our connecting flight by 30 minutes. After not finding anyone to help us we are directed to gate B39. It's name now lives in infamy. According to the really old lady in front of us in line she counted everyone in front of her. There were 99 people and the line was approximately 2.7 miles long. That might be exaggerating, but not by much. :-) We wait for 30 minutes and hardly move. So Doug and this man behind us get the bright idea that there has to be another customer service desk somewhere else. Sure enough! They walk a very long distance and find a line with 5 people in it. Me and the other wife stay in line just in case. We waited an hour before it was okay to step out. We also found out that this other man makes ice cream in Montana, Wilcoxsons, BONUS! It was good by the way.

I promise this day is almost over. I'm telling you it was long!

Doug used his magic negotiating skills and got us a flight out of Denver that night to Salt Lake City. We were to land at around midnight. We got no free hotel room out of the deal because we were told they coded the delay as a weather delay. Fabulous. We did get to eat some food before leaving Denver and then our flight was delayed 30 minutes out of Denver. Way to go, United! We love you!

We made it to Salt Lake City, surprisingly and got to stay here (although we didn't know this is what it looked like on the outside cuz it was really dark):

Thankfully, this place had a bed and we were able to sleep in preparation for the next exciting leg of the trip the next day...

Tune in tomorrow for: Day 2: Luggage, We Don't Need No Stinkin' Luggage!