Day One: The Great Denver Adventure

Today is the beginning of the vacation with Berta (Michael's mom) and Emily, which Berta has been planning and plotting for years. She wants to give us a way to get together and talk about "the boys" without them trying to listen in. Today has been a very long day of travel for the three of us.

At 1:00 this morning, our phone rang (or so Michael tells me--I had ear plugs in and was dead to the world), but neither of us was awake enough to get up to answer it. John (Michael's dad) left us a message saying that Berta's flight out of Anchorage had been delayed (we later learned that it was due to a storm in Texas--yeah, the weather in Texas affects flights in Alaska) and she would not be able to make the connecting flight in Seattle. I would still catch the morning flight, but Berta would be taking a later afternoon flight. I would be in Denver in time to meet Emily's flight, and the two of us could figure out the next step in the plan.

Two hours later, at 3:00 a.m. our alarm went off and Michael and I groggily stumbled through our morning routine in order to get me to the airport in time to catch my 6:00 a.m. flight. Neither of us thought of one crucial little detail: I didn't know what airline Emily was flying. I didn't even know whether she was flying out of Eugene or Portland, as both had been discussed. Michael dropped me off at the airport and the flight from Seattle to Denver was uneventful.

I arrived in Denver to find that they're having a bit of a heatwave here:it was 85 degrees at 9:30 in the morning, and it went up from there. I found the baggage claim, picked up my bag, then went on a search for Emily. And discovered that there were five potential flights that fit the description I was looking for. And that the Denver airport has 19 different baggage claim carousels. I started to wander. And I wandered. And I wandered. There was absolutely no way to know where she could be. I called Michael to see if maybe she had a cell phone: no. He called John, who wasn't home, to see if he could get me more flight information. Right when I was about to give up and find a table and sit and wait, I bumped into Emily, almost literally.

We found a convenient Taco Bell, as we were both starved, figured out how to use the wireless connection on our computers, and started sending emails to try to figure out the next step in the process. We debated and researched different options for getting from the airport to the hotel, but they were all expensive and would have taken forever. And we discovered that we could download an episode of CSI and watch it on Emily's computer. So we did that. Then we looked at the bus schedule again, and decided to go get ice cream and wait for Berta.

Berta's flight finally came in around 4:30 p.m., and we promptly picked up the rental van Berta had reserved and headed out to find our hotel. Emily held the map, Berta drove, and I did my best to look for the streets Emily was calling out. We found the hotel with no trouble at all. We settled into our very comfy room and headed downstairs to the hotel restaurant for dinner. Emily came back to the room to relax in front of the cable TV (an unknown luxury in our world), and Berta and I headed to the pool and spa for a dip. I'm writing up a quick post while I wait for my turn in the shower, and then it's off to bed for me--we have a wake-up call coming in at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow, so that we'll be up in time for our bus tour of the city.

This is going to be a great vacation! I'm already having a wonderful time. For those of you who are waiting for pictures, I promise, I'll take some tomorrow. I figure you've all seen airports though...