Yesterday I spent most of my day in airports or on the tarmac. I was traveling to South Dakota through Denver for an afternoon meeting. Then heading to Seattle through Denver again in the evening. The connections looked easy but it’s fall and Denver had a light snow storm with lots of fog. Needless to say, travel problems started with the first flight. Still by a miracle I did make it through to South Dakota arriving one hour late but making the meeting! More problems occurred heading to Seattle and now I am sitting in the Denver airport after spending a short night at the Red Lion courtesy of United. Feeling sorry for myself I headed to the Red Carpet area and it seems they felt sorry for me as well. After looking at my flights yesterday I was given a pass in for the morning.
As I sat in Souix Falls last night listening to the reports of delays related to O’Hare and Denver, I found myself wondering as I have before – Why are the largest airport hubs in cities that seem notorious for weird , difficult weather? Okay may be these airports have so many delays and issues because the largest airlines have hubs there. I also found myself wondering why the hotels are so far away from the Denver airport. By the time I had taken the shuttle and settled in I was only a few hours away from a a wake up call to go back to the airport since I was about 40 mins away. This had me thankful that generally I can take regional flights with smaller airlines like Horizon.
Of course I don’t want to sound too annoyed I still have not made it to Seattle. Plus there were and are those bright spots. Like the woman who made sure I was going to be on a flight this morning and kept me in my seat to Denver just in case I made it. She was great. Another flight person did an amazing job of sticking luggage in very small spaces through the plane when it looked like some people’s bags were not going to fit underneath. As I mentioned earlier there was the woman gave me a pass into the lounge after looking at my flights yesterday.
Then there are the folks who like me are stuck. With some I can share road warrior stories but the ones I really enjoy are the folks who are less hardened by the frequent flight delays and seem to maintain an adventurous attitude. One woman had two small children – the kids thought the time in the airport was great – she laughed as she ran around trying to kept up with the kids until they both fell asleep on the floor. Only then did the exhaustion show.
Indeed traveling through airports has it’s challenges and sitting here I have all sorts of thoughts about how it could be better. Bottom line it’s awesome that I can travel as easily as I do. Airports just give me such an opportunity to see all types of people traveling for all types of reasons. It’s quite amazing!
Okay I am off to catch the last leg of my trip. Hopefully I’ll be home when I write again!!