WY to KS (or how to make two one hour flights into 16 hours)

December 22, 2007 in my life:

4:45 am: leave house and drive to riverton airport

6:15 am: take off from riverton
7:30 am: arrive in Denver, find out our flight has been moved up 40 minutes to 10:07am. That means less sitting in an airport!

9:30 am: Board airplane in Denver
10:00am: Get off airplane in Denver because there is blowing snow covering the runway in Wichita that should be fixed in 30 to 40 minutes.
10:40am: Still sitting in airport.

11:30am: Finally breakdown and buy lunch ($23 for two sandwiches, a hot dog, a drink and three bags of chips)

12:30pm: Still waiting. Our kids have formed their own little playgroup with others who are waiting.1:30pm: Still waiting. Why did I leave my dumb laptop on the plane? And all my books? Why did I believe "30 or 40 minutes?"
2:30pm: Kids passing out in chairs and on the floor, I still wish I was smart enough to have grabbed a book, or my ipod, or even a piece of string when we got off the plane.

3:30pm: "Good news Wichita, we can go!" comes over the speaker followed by cheers. Everyone is immediately in line to board the plane.

4:00pm: We take off with the warning that if things get worse in Wichita we are coming back to Denver so we don't have to spend the night in somewhere like Lincoln, Nebraska (that was what our pilot said, it was great and it made my day. I can trust a guy to land on ice if he recognizes the problems of having to spend a night in Lincoln)

5:05pm: We land in Wichita. Everytime the pilot hit the brakes you could feel the plane start to skid sideways. That was a tense landing followed by cheers and clapping when we stopped. Someone should have filmed it for a sappy movie. We are now on Central time, so it is 6:05p.

7:00pm: We finally get off the plane. We waited FOREVER for the plows to make it possible for us to get to the terminal. I think they were playing some wierd plow truck drivers game of tag.

8:30pm: I see Kennedy's bag come out and hold it over my head as it is the first one from our entire flight to make it to us.

8:45pm: Our stroller comes out and we leave the airport, quickly.

All in all, a crazy day with my family, but considering the circumstances, a good day. United employees where helpful throughout the day and tomorrow we do the whole thing again to get to Florida. Except I'm mostly sure it won't be snowing in Florida.