Day One - Hurry Up and Wait!

It was a typical start. Even with no impending storms looming on the horizon, there was always an urgency to get going. With just over an hour to make it to the gate, John insisted on expediting the process and insisted on valeting the car at the off-site garage - Expresso Parking. Thom wheeled his 98 Lexus into the covered garage and flipped the keys to the friendly attendant. Luggage was tossed onto the waiting shuttle bus. We were ready to fly! .....

The shuttle departure clock ticked down from 5 minutes 45 seconds as we sat staring at each other. John was tapping his foot, glancing at his watch. Martin, the cheerful bus driver slowly put the bus in gear and flew out of the garage. We are rolling now!. Approaching the exit, Martin slammed on the breaks and shoved the bus into reverse. He backed up to three women unpacking their trunks. Anything for additional tips. The women, obviously unaware of the important nature of our quest, and clearly new to the scene of actually rushing, took another 5 minutes to get their gear in order. To Martin's credit, he rushed out and grabbed their luggage and all but carried them into the van.

Martin blasted away again, down the road to the terminal. But wait, a long cut! For some reason Martin decided to take a circuitous route to the airport, revisiting the same stoplight-of-doom we had spent nearly a week at just 15 minutes ago.

Finally, at the terminal we lugged out 43 suitcases to the curb-side check in. There was no curb side check in. This is Southwest Airlines, fool. Fortunately, there was no line at the automated bag check in. Unfortunately, we had no automated bags. Nevertheless, we flung our bags onto the scale, while John worked his magic on the computerized check in. After selecting "No bags" and middle seats in the smoking section of a delayed flight to Kabul, I pushed John aside and finished the task.

After checking our IDs the attendant cheerfully informed us that the flights were an hour delayed. Oh well, at least we now had time to enjoy the airport cuisine before departure. Of course our gate (#32) was the very last one on the tarmac.

The flight went very smoothly as we both nodded off in aisle 10, enjoying our gourmet 100-calorie thinchips and 14 peanuts. We arrived at DEN around 11:30 PM, again at the VERY last gate on the tarmac. I think John inadvertently checked the FULL-AEROBIC option on the flight plan.

We race-walked through the mostly-empty terminal to the infamous DEN shuttle trains. Again, we stood waiting for about 10 minutes listening to the prerecorded public announcements nagging us not to try anything suspicious. The short ride on the train left us off at the baggage carousels...all 25 of them, with little indication of which one our bags might appear at. I always wondered why there were no baggage roller coasters, or baggage bumpercar rides.

To its credit, DEN has the most efficient baggage system, and we have yet to wait for a bag on numerous trips. They can even expedite the losing of your luggage if they wanted. We grabbed most of our bags and raced out into the cold dark evening, to locate our Avis shuttle bus. I love shuttle busses.

We had chosen Avis over Hertz this year due to some Free Day coupons I had acquired on EBay, which provided up to a full size vehicle at no cost. I kidded John that they would be out of full size and offer to upgrade us to some gas guzzling behemoth at "no additional charge".

Upon our arrival at the desk, the chirpy Avis deskperson quickly informed us that there were no more full size cars but...."at no additional cost"....he would upgrade us to one of the following: a Chevy Suburban, a Hummer H3, or a Jeep EcoDevastater Hybrid. We chose the Devastater and headed off into the dark lot to look for our global-warming contributor.

We arrived at the La Quinta around 1:30 AM just outside the airport. John had received a free night here due to a service faux pas from his last visit. Something to do with finding unauthorized fluids on the bed sheets.

Today we are off to a strenuous day of bike trail chasing, followed by some theatre action and fine dining research. Boulder is a nice place to non-storm chase.