Wedding Weekend Part 1

Before I fill all you loyal readers in on the juicy details of James Johnson's wedding this past weekend, travelling to and from Colorado was such a nightmare, it warrants its own story.

Leg one of the trip consisted of flying direct from La Guardia to Denver on Friday afternoon. Simple enough in theory, but far more complex for the rocket scientists working at United. Long story short, Swells and I had a four hour delay--2 hours sitting comfortably in the bar and another 2 hours waiting on the runway with the hot Queens sun beating down on us. The delay was probably worse for Doobs and Tbone who were meeting us in Denver and had to hover around the airport for upwards of six hours. We finally landed on Friday night, rented a car and drove the remaining 1.5 hours to our hotel/lovenest. We were originally slated to rent a compact car, but since Alamo was out of small cars, we got a free upgrade to a SUV. This upgrade, a GMC Acadia, would prove incredibly valuable to next day.

On Saturday we drove to the wedding which consisted of driving 30 minutes on a narrow, winding dirt road. The wedding was lovely--full of amazing views, tasty food and libations and good music--but the dirt road certainly made travel difficult.

On Sunday, after sleeping in a yurt (see previous entry for a more accurate description) and attending a little post-wedding brunch, it was time to make our way back to the Denver Airport. This was Leg 2 of the trip. Swells and I left in our trusty GMC Acadia a good 4 hours before the plane left. That's four hours to drive a little over 100 miles. It took us 1.5 hours to make the drive on Friday. Inconceivably, every resident of Colorado seemed to be on the same road we were on Sunday afternoon. We received word that our flight was delayed 20 minutes, so we thought there was a chance we could get gas, return the rental car, get our tickets, clear security and just make our flight. We finally arrived in the terminal and noted the flight leaves in 25 minutes. We sprinted to the nearest kiosk but since there was technically less than 30 minutes to the supposed departure, they wouldn't allow us to print out tickets. As we are complaining to a customer service rep, the flight gets delayed another 15 minutes meaning we are now atleast 30 minutes from takeoff. So naturally, we try to check back into the kiosk to print the tickets, but of course, the delays aren't factored into their computers and they still won't print. At the same time we are on the phone with United and they tell us there are no more flights into New York until the next morning. What made it so frustrating was that while we did arrive to the airport late, when you factor in delays, there was a point where we were there 30 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave, but the computers didn't match up with the departure monitors.

Since Swells and I weren't making it of Denver that night, we ended up taking a cab into Denver to stay with one of his buddies in Lodo. I've never been out in Denver beyond the airport, but it was certainly was gorgeous. Gorgeous. We ended up waking up at 5:15 to catch our plane, which thankfully left on time and spit us back out into New York. Air travel is the worst.