Travel at Your Own Risk

And maybe not with me

My mother is a Travel Planning Wizard. I’m serious: she’s really good at it. Additionally, she’s adventurous and brave! She tells a story about the first time we traveled together, when I was 13 months old:

I believe, in all, we had 10 flights that trip. I thought it was 11, but can’t figure that out. Anyway, GR-MSP-DEN-ASP, ASP-DEN-LA, LA-DEN-ASP, ASP-DEN-MSP-GR. The only time I had help was when Grandpa joined us for the LA to DEN portion. You didn’t have your own seat - had to sit on my lap. I had a backpack to keep you in for the walking parts. You were basically a good kid - but YOU DIDN’T SLEEEP A WINK! One exception: the time it took me to walk from one gate in Denver to the Aspen Airways (Scareways) gate. I was wearing yellow jeans on our flight from DEN to LA and made the mistake of ordering red wine for lunch. You did a fine job of upending my cup and spilling the wine down my crotch. We visited Grandma Powell and Auntie Mo in Laguna Beach. I have no memories of any problems taking you out to dinner or anything. When I look back on it, I can’t believe I did it. You had a blast in Snowmass. We spent most of our time in the pool, throwing you up in the air to land in the water and we’d look at each other under water. You loved it! Oddly, the next summer you wouldn’t go in the lake.

**I received another text right after this one that said she also ended up feeding me a hotdog (gasp!) in an airport for lack of anything else. Ha!**

So yeah. I grew up traveling, and have always loved the airport. I love the smell, the people-watching, the potential of being elsewhere so very soon. But as with all things we love, sometimes they let you down.

We just got back from vacation. “We,” in this instance, is my husband, our two kids, and I. This was the trip we had planned as a 12 day road trip for the summer of 2020 and then YOU KNOW. Since then, we a) decided that the kids couldn’t handle that much time in the car (or maybe that we couldn’t handle that much time in the car with them), and b) we really couldn’t spare 12 whole days away from work/home/pets, etc. We started planning an abbreviated sojourn, flying into Denver the day before the concert at Red Rocks, then adding on 4 days in Crested Butte to explore the mountains and spend time with family.

A month before we were scheduled to leave, my daughter received the marching band schedule, which showed the first day as the final day of our vacation. The daughter lives for marching band, plus it will be her senior year, so we cut the trip down by a day. We took a hit, but not a huge one. Wrinkle #1.

Then, Delta informed us that flights had changed, and the flight that was scheduled for late afternoon on our final day was now at 8:55am. So instead of driving back to Denver on our last day, we had to leave a day early and stay at an airport hotel. Wrinkle #2.

It was about this time when my husband started wondering if this trip was really worth it, since we were now down to 6 days, 2 of them being mostly airport. I convinced him that we could pack a whole lot of experiences into a short time, and it was absolutely worth it for the kids to have this opportunity. I am my mother’s daughter, after all. I know how to work travel miracles! He acquiesced, we adjusted reservations, and we were back on track.

We spent the extra money to fly out of the small northern Minnesota airport near our house, so that we could park for free and it would be a quick drive to our front door after all of the travel. We flew out late afternoon on a Wednesday, resigned to the fact that it would be two flights —> rental car —> hotel the first night. We arrived in Denver, took the shuttle to the Hertz location connected to the airport, and discovered that Travelocity had “assisted” me in making a reservation at a non-airport-connected location, which had already been closed for 4 hours. Oh, and the airport location didn’t have any cars available for walk-up customers. Wrinkle #3.

The attendant at the (wrong) Hertz location was extremely helpful, however — and laughed at all of my husband’s jokes — and we managed to get a (pretty small) pickup truck for a bunch of extra money. Onward.

The following four days were more or less awesome. Our kids were gratifyingly impressed with the mountains, and we all got to have adventures: *actual* mountain biking (down the Butte!), horseback riding (turns out I have no fear of heights on horseback!), off-roading in a Jeep (they only lost my aunt once!), and my son turning 14 (please stop trying to give him children’s menus now!). The husband and I were beaming with success, patting ourselves on the back for a job well done.

We headed back to Denver through quite a bit of traffic, so we arrived slightly later than we would have liked. Our hotel was crowded and understaffed. We did not have a shower curtain, and the lone desk agent was uninterested in obtaining one for us. We headed to the restaurant across the street and experienced impressively terrible service. One by one, my family members lost all semblance of cool and had a bunch of temper tantrums. I declared the night was over and we all needed to get up at 6am to leave.

Turns out, that stress-based decision would cause Wrinkle #4: The Ultimate Wrinkle.

We got up and out of the hotel fairly quickly, with a relatively dry bathroom considering the lack of curtain. The pump at the first gas station we tried didn’t work, but the 2nd one did. We got the second available shuttle to the airport, and even though we weren’t arriving as early as I usually do we were still fine. BUT THEN.

There were approximately 8 people behind the counter at Delta, but only 3 of them were helping customers. The customers that were being helped were having either enormous problems, or long, drawn-out, what-is-your-life-like conversations with the attendant, causing us to be in that line for 20+ minutes. At that time, I glanced down at our boarding passes and declared, “We are at gate A6, everyone! Remember that!” When we finally emerged from that area, we were confronted with vague, confusing signage directing us to several different options for security. We chose… the 29 minute line option. We all agreed that each individual should run for the gate as soon as they got through security, so at least one of us got to the gate on time. I mean, Delta knew we were in the airport — we’d checked our bags — so we were sure it would be ok. (Spoiler alert: it would not be ok.)

Hey, would you have guessed that Gate A6 would be the furthest gate away from security? I would not have! But it was, and my daughter and I were on our way. We hopped on the tram (oh yes, security was in a different terminal than our gate) and then ran towards Concourse A. Have I mentioned that my foot is only 6 weeks post-surgery at this point? No? Well, that’s probably important because I sent my daughter running on ahead. It was at this fateful moment when I again looked at the boarding passes only to find that we were going to… A26. Not A6, but A26. I started texting the entire family, while attempting to make my way back to the correct gate. I hear from my husband that he has been crushed by the tram door but that he and our son are on their way. I reach the gate… just as the doors close. There are no attendants. There are people staring at me with (probably) pity and disgust (I’m pretty sweaty at this point). I go to the next gate’s desk and ask those attendants for help and am summarily blown off. My family arrives, panting and sweating, so that I may tell them we missed our flight.

It is at this point that the luxury of flying out of the little northern Minnesota airport comes back to bite us in the ass. You see, we were able to fly standby back to Minneapolis, but not in time to make the connecting flight. The little airport only has one flight a day. Additionally, no rental car agency rents one-way to northern Minnesota, and there were no bus or van options. The crux of the matter is that we were forced to get another hotel… and our daughter missed her first day of marching band after all. Wrinkle # $%*&! I texted my husband from the Delta desk, where a new attendant was trying to help me salvage the ruins of our plans: “My mother never would have missed this flight.” He texted back, “Right.”

Dear Reader, that was an unpleasant night. I’d love to tell you that we DoorDashed all the things, sent the kids to buy swimsuits, and made the best of everything. Well, actually, all of that happened except making the best of everything. The kids were remarkably positive, but Husband and I were broken. I’m not proud of it, but it was just all too much.

We are now home. The loveliness and excitement of the majority of our trip is starting to return to our minds. We have decided that we will probably be taking a nice long break from commercial airlines.

The husband will probably want to be in charge of the next vacation.

Thanks for reading!

Love, Susie