Planes, Trains and Automobiles
This entry was posted on 4/9/2006 3:22 PM and is filed under Vacation.
On March 30, I dropped Jay and Tyler at the airport and they took off for Indianapolis and the Final Four. It was Ty's first coach's convention. Later on he told me he had no idea so many people knew Dad. "And they all LOVE him." he said. He didn't need to sound so surprised.
The following morning, I loaded the rest of the kids into the van and we drove to Margy's; she lives in a gorgeous suburb west of Denver. The drive was easy, the weather calm and we made it in record time. I'd never seen a semi tipped over, not in all my years of road tripping. This trip we saw seven, over the course of about two hundred miles. Seven! They were all lying on the side of the road looking like dinosaurs that had keeled over and died! Katie thought maybe a tornado had done it, but I pointed out that there was no debris and nothing else was disturbed. "Well, do you think a Giant came through here?" she suggested. That would've been kind of cool. A little scary, but cool.
We got to Margy's in time for dinner and we stayed up too late, but that's all part of vacation. We spent the weekend having fun and we went to Golden and had ice cream. On Sunday, we cooked a 17lb bristket for barbecued beef and Margy invited some of her friends. Jay and Ty were due to land in Denver at 4:00 and none of Margy's friends had never met Jay.
At 2:00, we got a call from Jay that their plane had been delayed.
At 4:00, we got a call from Ty that the plane needed a part that maybe would get to Indy by 8:00.
At 6:00 we got a call from Jay saying that they were in the airport basement because of the tornadoes.
At 6:30 Ty called to say that if their flight was cancelled, the next one to Denver was on Wednesday.
At 7:00 their flight was cancelled.
At 7:30 Ty called to say that Jay was trying to rent a car to drive to Chicago where they maybe could catch a flight to Denver.
At 9:00 Jay called to say that because of the Final Four, there were no cars to be had. At this point he didn't have a new plan.
Our family Vacation in Vail was Monday thru Friday in a home we bought at a charity auction.
It was expensive.
Katie was flying home on Wednesday because she couldn't get the whole week off.
At 10:00 Ty called to say there were no flights anywhere. No hotel rooms in Indy, either.
At 10:20 Jay and Ty got put on a comuter to Chicago.
At 10:35 they were kicked off that flight because of mechanical difficulties.
They both called just to be sad on the phone.
In Denver, we went to bed.
At 11:00 Jay found a rental car.
At 11:01 he asked an airline employee for a voucher for the car and she said "Why drive to Chicago? I can get you on a flight there in five minutes." then she hit her computer and got them a connection to Denver.
At 1:30 the phone in my bedroom woke me up. I knew there was only one reason anyone would call at that hour, so I grabbed the phone. The second I hit "talk", the phone began screaming at me like an air raid siren!
I hit every button on it in my attempt to make it stop and nothing worked. I muffled it against myself and ran into the kitchen where Katie was on the phone with Tyler. She looked at me as though I were nuts as I ran to the backdoor and threw the shreiking phone out onto the deck.
"It won't stop screaming!" I explained.
"I can't listen to that all night" she said. You could still hear the siren in the back yard. I still can't believe no one else woke up. "Take out the battery," Katie suggeested. I opened the door and grabbed it and we both tried to pry the back off. By this time Katie was laughing so hard she wasn't much help. I finally got the back off and ripped out all the phones innards.
Sweet silence.
Jay had called to ask Katie to email directions from the Denver airport to Margy's house. They were on their way.
They finally arrived at about 4:30am.
To cap this perfect day, somewhere in the Denver airport, Ty actually got a sliver in his eye. Fortunately, Margy has a good friend who's an opthalmologist and he was able to pluck the log out of Ty's eye and we were on our way to Vail right after lunch.
The moment we walked thru the front door, we realized our very expensive vacation was actually the deal of the century.
