Greetings from Boulder! By some miracle, I’m here.
It was another tough travel day. I learned my lesson from last time and took a car to the airport and had no worries that I wasn’t going to make my flight. My flight was supposed to take off at 6:30, but when we hadn’t boarded by 6:25, I knew there was something going on.
“Ladies and gentleman, the plane has a flat tire. We’re fixing it now and will be boarding around 7.”
Great.
We finally boarded a little after 7, and then sat on the plane for at least 30-45 minutes before the pilot came over the loudspeaker.
“Ladies and gentleman, a bolt has popped off the plane that we need to replace. We’re turning off the air conditioning because it’s right in the repairmen’s ears. We hope it should be no more than another 20 minutes, but we’ll keep you updated.”
Awesome.
Just before 9…
“Ladies and gentleman, wecan’t find any bolts in stock. We’re going to need to deplane you. If you have a connecting flight, please see the gate agent.”
Of course, I did have a connecting flight (I flew from LaGuardia to Kansas City to Denver), so I hopped on line to talk to the gate agent. Luckily, I met a very nice girl named Kelly on line at this point and we hung out through this whole ordeal, making it much better.
They gave us meal vouchers, and I used mine for an iced coffee and turkey sausage flatbread at Dunkin’ Donuts.
By 11:30, we reboarded and by 12:15, we were back in the air. (You know, nearly 6 hours after our original flight.)
We landed in Kansas City around 2:15, and had a two-hour layover.
Two hour layover? Two beers.
I also had a turkey avocado sandwich and none of these chips, because they were gross. And DEFINITELY no pickle. Ew.
I finally landed in Denver around 5:30, bid goodbye to my new friend and hopped on the Super Shuttle for Boulder, where I’m staying and where I had dinner with Kate. We went to a Mexican restaurant near my hotel called Cantina Laredo, and I had amazing tacos.
And two dirt-cheap pomegranate margaritas.
Now I’m off to hike and enjoy the conference festivities!
thank god for beer in airports.
@Emily: yesss
Call me wind because I am absoutlley blown away.
Ugh, flying s-u-c-k-s. But yay for new travel friends! Have fun at the conference…I’ll be eagerly watching for your tweets and posts!
@Katy Widrick: Wish you were here!
Have fun in Boulder! It is so close to me (I live in Denver) but I hardly ever make the drive.
Glad you made it to CO safely! I won’t lie… when I read this I thought you were speaking PM for some reason and I was like why is she getting coffee at night? Why does she have such nice day light in the 2:15 AM late night dinner pics? Good things it’s Friday!!
@ashleigh: ha, no!!!
I really wish I were in CO, but the plane ticket was too $$.
@Sana: I saw your nametag when I registered 🙁
I’m thinking with all those problems with the plane – you wouldn’t have wanted to fly on it anyway! 😉 Have a BLAST in Boulder!
yikes!!! i thought my flight was tough last week. How frustrating your ordeal sounds! I am glad you were able to finally get to denver, though. Have fun at the conference
Who did you fly yesterday!?
I’m thankful you weren’t on that plane! The next thing to go may have been a wing! YIKES!
@Ash Bear: Frontier…
Boulder might be my favorite place in the world. Have a great time at the conference!