When you miss your flight and have to hang around until the evening to be on standby to get a seat………
A jack-knifed tractor trailer made me late getting to Denver. I was five minutes late to get on board. Options? Not many. I was lucky I made it then-the further north you went from Colorado Springs the worse the roads got.
1) Go on the standby list for the only other flight to Dullsville. Waiting time 7 hours.
2) Get a new reservation leaving on Sunday-SUNDAY-and pay an added 400 dollars for the privilege. Nothing available on Saturday going anywhere.
I take option one.
But I wasn’t going to hang around the airport. I head back to Hertz and rent me a car-might as well prowl a little.
The snow was still coming down as I made it on to 70 West-but the traffic was moving. I soon found myself downtown, looking for a parking space, and something to do. As I came around the streets I finally see the huge neon DINER sign on the corner of the building. There was an open street parking space right across the street. The snow is coming down heavier now.
“Screw it-I’m going inside”.
Turns out, the Rocky Mountain Diner is a pretty cool place to linger over a meal-when you are not going anywhere soon. Bought a paper and sidled up to the counter.
“Today’s soup?”
“Homemade clam chowder”
Perfect! And as it turns out it was homemade-very good with real bacon in it. Order a tuna sandwich and settle down to read my paper. As I glance up, the snow is not stopping-it’s getting worse. What day is tomorrow? Oh yea, the first day of spring…………
Having dragged out lunch as long as I could, I found my way over to a Borders book store somewhere in South Denver. I had passed a movie theater-and thought hard about going in-but opted to go to Borders books instead.
Which proved a wise choice. When I went in it seemed the snow was tapering off.- I was wrong, it was just winding up for act II. As I meandered around the shelves it slowly dawned on me that the level of snow was increasing exponentially-so much so, I might not make it back to the airport.
I opt for a tactical retreat back to DIA. An hour later (Now close to 5pm) I am back in line at security. Time to hunker down at the bar.
The flight finally departed at 9:30 PM-I was lucky enough to get a seat.
So how was your day?