Well hello thar fellars, Long time no blog. I don't know why I titled the blog as such, just thought bloggarty was fun to say, so it must be fun to read. Well, lots has a happened since I last wrote. I went to Tahoe and did some riding and had the travel day from hell on the way back (this will be revisited). Tahoe was fun, snow was great, weather was chilly but not as bad as here, so all was good.
I saw Cloverfield, got a massive headache, and felt like vomiting. In order to really understand my pain, one must first understand that I am the same kid who had to take Dramamine to compete in the Bond tournament on my dorm floor Freshman year. Not competing wasn't an option, after all, I wanted to have friends. "T-Hall, Nineteen-Ninety-Eight, Y'all!" Overall, it was a pretty cool Monster movie, even though I watched 2/3rds of it leaning on my hand and watching it through my fingers to fend off projectile vomit. It didn't help that the stoner snowboarders in front of us snuck gyros into the theater. Not a great smell when you are reeling from motion sickness. All in all, good movie.
The trip back from Tahoe was absolute Hades. We arose at 3 in the AM to shower and hit the road for Reno for a 6:15 flight. First flight was Johnny on the Spot, wheels up at 6:20, looking to land in Salt Lake City at 8:15 with gaining one hour. Young Pimply-faced Pilot comes over loudie and says in ear shattering volume that there is some "inclement" weather in SLC, but we hope to be able to land, if we can't we may be directed to Idaho Falls, but we should be ok. Well, 40 minutes into the 1 hour flight, pre-pubescent comes back over the loud speaker and informs us that we are in a holding pattern for Salt Lake City and we hoped to be cleared for landing in 20 minutes, because if we are not cleared to land by then, we either have to, and I quote, "Attempt a missed landing in SLC, or head out to Idaho because we don't have enough fuel to circle for any longer." ITS A ONE-HOUR FLIGHT THAT CONTINUES ON TO TORONTO, AND WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH FUEL! Come on, that is ridiculous. Toronto is a long way from Salt Lake. Anyway, we end up going to Pocatello, ID because Idaho Falls was too packed with other planes who couldn't get into SLC. I guess there was a plane that landed in SLC and slid off the runway because the plows couldn't keep up, so they shut the airport down.
We sat on the runway in the plane in Pocatello f0r 3 hours because there was no terminal to get off into! Pocatello is about the size of, hmmm.... lets go with Litchfield, yeah Litch sounds right. Anyway, so they reopened the airport in SLC and after supposedly fueling up in Poc, we headed back to where we were supposed to go. 10 minutes later, we were in another holding pattern. Clearasil, comes back on the speaks and tells us that we are holding and haven't been cleared and since we don't have enough fuel, we may have to go back to Pokey. "Not enough gas," I exclaim, "We just fueled up." Evidently, just a few drops. I think the pilot, forgot his credit card, and only had a Lincoln, so he squeezed the pump gently for 5 bones, hoping to avoid the classic 1 cent oversqueeze. So Archie Andrews comes back on and tells us that he begged and pleaded and they are going to let us land. Great!
So we land, meanwhile, in Pokey, my dad had called Glady (family go-t0-gal) to find us a new flight, because we obviously missed our connection. Upon arrival in SLC, we are informed that there are 2 more flights to Minneapolis and there are absolutely no seats available and the stand-by list is about 50 deep. Gladys, had found a flight to Fargo arriving at 5:30 with room and a connection to Mpls at 6:30, putting us home at 7:30. Which we were able to get on. We went to the gate of the next flight to Mpls to see if there was any chance of us getting on it, there wasn't. Delta had booked Scott and Chelsy to leave the next day and Alisha and I to leave two days later! What a joke, they had us staying there til Wednesday. Unreal.
Meanwhile, our flight to Fargo was delayed from 3:00 to 5:00, so we had 3 hours in the airport to kill, so I housed a quiznos and kept reading. Well we got to Fargo at 7:45, if you remember from an earlier paragraph, our connection was at 6:30, but we saw that the flight was delayed. It left at 7:40. So, we did what any hardened Northeners would do. We walked out into the -14 degree ground temp in Fargo, pulled as hard as we could on the frozen doors of our rented mini-van and started the 4 hour drive to Shangri-La (my bed). The drive was pretty smooth, dropped off LZ in Glenwood, and kept on crusin. Got back to the cities at 12:30, picked up FDR at 1, and was lights out by 2:00.
It was a long day, but I read the entire book of "Into the Wild" and 1/3 or "Into Thin Air" both are excellent. We got our bags the next day and we have moved on with our lives. Fun trip, poor travels.
That is all...be back soon.
JZ
Hedberg - This shirt is dry clean only, which means, ITS DIRTY."