I guess moving from one country to another with a family of 5 is rarely similar to a stroll through a flower garden but this is crazy. After a few hectic days of packing, shipping more boxes than we ever imagined and trying to do enough cleaning to avoid the wrath of our ever-generous in-laws, it all came to a furious climax yesterday, July 6th, the day of our scheduled departure from Colorado Springs.
We arrived at the lovely small town airport a full 2 hours early, with a all 22 pieces of luggage only to find a long line of frustrated customers at the Frontier check-in counter. Turns out they had boarded the flight before ours and sat on the runway for 2 hours before being ordered back to the terminal due to some random act of God or human-kind. But that was okay because it gave us time to re-weigh our bags on the airport scales and make the necessary adjustments to get all 12 of our checked bags somewhere close to the 50lb limit. 3 hours and several false starts later we finally got the official word. We wouldn’t be flying that evening due to tornado warnings around Denver, where we had been scheduled to catch a connecting flight to San Diego. After exploring every option with the ground crew it became evident that the earliest flight we could get was a full 2 days later…
Now I’m usually not one to mind cutting things close, but in addition to missing our entire family reunion for which both sisters are travelling to San Diego where my aging mother resides, this new schedule meant arriving in San Diego some time around mid-night on Wednesday and then having to find a place to stay near the airport so we could catch our flight to Hawaii early the next morning. One more delay or glitch could really leave us high and dry.
Getting back home to our in-laws place late last night I was totally bummed and just wanted to go to bed. But Hydi, the ever resourceful one got online and found a relatively cheap ticket early the next morning out of Denver with one open seat and suggested that I go for it alone, thereby sort of salvaging the planned visit with my mother and sisters. We slept for about 3 hours and then embarked on the drive to Denver, and that’s where I’m at now.
My 6:15AM flight is currently delayed for 2 hours but fortunately my layover in Salt Lake City was a full 3 hours so I still have a chance at making it and getting to San Diego some time around noon.
As for the rest of the family, they will plan on taking the rescheduled flight plan Wednesday night and pray for no more delays.
I guess the moral of the story is to avoid afternoon and evening flights during the summer in Colorado. The storm clouds are still brewing and who knows when the sun will shine again.
