Rough Trip to the Rockies

December 23rd began my annual trek out to Colorado to have Christmas with my family. Even more exciting this year is that my "new" hubby (we've been together for almost 6 years, but we just got married this summer and this is the first year he is joining my family for the Holidays) is accompanying me on the trek. We booked our flights for Sunday evening thinking we would have the weekend to pack/relax, then make it to my family's home in time for all the Christmas festivities.

The (not so) friendly skies had a different plan for us.

We planned our travel day well...gave ourselves plenty of time to make it to the off-site parking lot, thus giving us plenty of time to make it to the airport to check our bags, thus giving us plenty of time to make our 5 pm flight.

Being a neurotic planner, I of course checked the status of our flight before leaving home. The United website told me that our flight was delayed until 7 pm. Trying to be optimistic, I figured we ought to get to the airport in time for a possible 5 pm departure anyway.

We arrived at the parking lot at 2:45 pm. I had located & printed out an online coupon to save us $5 per day of parking. Unfortunately, I forgot that during the Holidays, lots of people fly to see family, thus parking their cars. The lot had room for us, but would not let us use our discount coupon. We had to weigh the pros & cons...ultimately, we didn't have enough time to find another parking lot that may or may not have been cheaper, so we agreed to pay the full price. Good decision, given that the airport was likely going to be crowded and we wanted plenty of time to check bags/pass through security/get to our gate with time to spare.

We arrived at check-in at 3 pm. Given that the Newark airport does not have many United Airlines flights, our check in line was about 1 person long. We got through in 5 mins. With so much time to spare, we figured we could hang out in the airport food court for a bit before going through security and limiting our options for food & entertainment. By 3:30 pm, we headed to security, just in case the line was super long. The line was actually super short. We got through in 5 minutes. That was with shoes, coats, backpacks, and a bag full of wrapped gifts (I had nightmares about the TSA agents demanding to open all of the gifts, including the ones to my hubby, who would have been standing next to me at the time).

As we approached our gate, we decided to check the status of our flight yet again. So much for my optimism...our flight was now delayed until 9 pm. Ugh. That meant 5-1/2 hours of waiting at the gate. Good thing I brought a few books! We were pleased to see a mini-TGI Friday's near our gate, and planned on having dinner there a bit later. We parked ourselves near an electical outlet so my hubby could play games on his laptop, and we settled in for our long wait.

Every now & then, I would get up and check out the flight status monitors...optimistically thinking that our flight would suddenly say "boarding". No such luck. Our flight was unfortunately not the only one delayed. In the area surrounding our gate, there were hundreds of people waiting to be told when their aircraft would arrive so that their flight could take off. Even worse, a couple of flights were cancelled. No sensible reason was given, just that "air traffic control" was not allowing flights to come into Newark. My best guess was high winds & rain, but that was never confirmed.

Right before we packed up our stuff to head to TGIF's, we checked the monitor again. AGH!! Our flight had been delayed again...we were now scheduled to leave at 10:40 pm. What bothered me most was not that we would have to wait another couple of hours (though I was certainly not HAPPY about this), but that at some point the airline reps would come on the loud speaker and say, "Sorry folks...we know you've been waiting for your flight for 6 hours, but it's now been cancelled and the next open flight is Christmas Day." I crossed my fingers and headed to dinner.

We had our mediocre dinner, sharing our 4 person table with a very nice couple who was waiting for their flight to San Francisco to leave, and headed back to find some seats to wait for another couple hours. Time was now about 7 pm. I was getting extremely bored with my book at this point, and didn't want to take out my i-pod (fearing that I would run the battery down with our long wait). I entertained myself for a bit watching my hubby play his computer game, watching a couple of kids run around like little maniacs, and walking around to look at the flight status monitors.

A miracle happened at about 9:50 pm. Our aircraft had arrived at the gate!!! Having seen a brand new pair of pilots walks behind the podium, I knew we were safe from the "timing out" issues other flights were having. Within 20 minutes, we were boarding and the end was in sight.

Four hours later, we touched down in Denver. It may have been 1 am Mountain time (3 am Eastern time), but I was awake & excited! We were finally in Colorado!

After a good night's sleep, our terrible travel day was a long lost memory. Who cares how long it took to get home?? We were just happy to be home!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!