Front Range Conspiracy

The state of Colorado does not want me to leave. I am beginning to fear what will happen the next time I go to Colorado and try to leave it again.

Last year, Colorado tried to keep me there by totalling my car. Fortunately, I was able to outwit it by flying home. This year Colorado was on to me.

Monday afternoon I sat in the lobby of the hotel, waiting for my shuttle to come take me to the airport. I had reserved the shuttle a week in advance, prepaid. I had the confirmation ticket in my hand. They were supposed to arrive at 5:00. I knew that I had scheduled it pretty tight, but was confident that I would get to the airport in time for my flight.

The shuttle never came.

The lovely concierge at the hotel, Brian, got the company on the phone and after 5 minutes on hold and being hung up on once, he determined that they were not going to come get me at all. He gave them all of the information for them to refund my money, and then flagged down another shuttle for me.

After stopping at a few other hotels, we set off to the airport. About halfway there (and remember that DIA is somewhere near Kansas), it occurred to me that I had no cash. Why would I need it? I had prepaid for my shuttle.

This shuttle driver only took cash.

So, upon arriving at the airport (quite late) I had to run inside, find an ATM, get money, pay the guy, collect my bags and head off to check in for my flight. Too late for the sky hop - but he directed me to the airline counter. Too late to check in on the kiosk - it logged me out and referred me to an agent.

The agent took one look at me and told me I had missed my flight. I, happy just to have finally arrived, agreed to be placed on standby for the later flight. I had never flown standby before, but people do it all the time. Couldn't be too hard.

Having now given up on the 6:45 flight (it was 6:10), I checked my bags and took a much-needed restroom break. I then casually headed for security. TSA was understaffed, with only two attendants staffing the x-ray and metal detectors. We had to load our own stuff onto the x-ray conveyor belt.

I put my shoes and tote bag in one tray, then took my laptop out of my bag and put it in another tray. There was a line of people crowding up to go through, so to save space I put the laptop bag on top of the tray, like I always do. Went through the metal detector, no problem. However, just as my second tray came out of x-ray, a third TSA person walked up and was informed of a problem bag. He took my tote with my shoes in it and started rifling through my tote bag. While he did this, I got my other tote and put the laptop back in the bag.

"Is there a laptop in this bag?"
"No . . . in this bag."
"Is there an iPod in this bag?"
"No . . . in this bag."
"I need to see that bag."
"No problem."

I gave him the other bag.

"You didn't take the laptop out of the bag?"
"No, I did. I just already put it back in again."
"Oh . . . that's a problem. I need to see the laptop."
"Okay, I'll take it back out."

I started unzipping the bag.

"No! There has been too much touching already! You need to step away."

Oh, dear. Now, this is the part where it was really good that I had already given up on the 6:45 flight. Since I had hours to kill at this point, I was willing to do whatever it took to make these guys happy, at their own pace.

"Hey Bob, these bags haven't cleared security. And now she's touched them and gone through them, so she hasn't cleared security either."

Oh dear, oh dear. Have I mentioned that we have been upgraded to an Orange Homeland Security alert level?

Bob, fortunately, is a reasonable guy, and he walked me back out of security, and then back through again. They re-x-rayed my bags and everyone was happy, and they sent me on my way. That easily could have become a very tense situation but they realized that they had sort of caused the problem so they sent me on my way. Good thing I'm not a terrorist!

Checking in done, bathroom done, security done and done. I head off to my gate, and hear over the PA system: "Passenger So-and-so, please report to gate A65 for flight xxx to Salt Lake City.

My original flight hadn't even left yet!

Whatever. I got some food, settled in, read a book for a while. About an hour before the flight, I asked the gate agents if I was going to get a seat. They took my boarding pass and told me they'd get back to me.

It makes me nervous to be at an airport with no boarding pass, but I'm sure that is always how it goes when you fly standby, right?

At 9:10 they started boarding. I still hadn't gotten a call and was starting to get a little nervous when finally they called me over and gave me a boarding pass with a seat assignment. I got straight on the plane. We finished boarding. We sat there, and sat there and sat there . . . finally, at almost 10:00, the pilot came on to announce that the passenger manifest did not match the boarding list, and now they had to go through ticket by ticket to match up who was on the plane and who was not.

This made me very nervous that they were going to kick me off the plane. (Stranger things have happened at the airports, recently.) I just wanted to go home! Why won't Colorado let me leave!

Finally, though, the plane doors were closed and we got on our way. It was a very bumpy flight, but we made it back okay and finally at 1:00 I was snug at home in bed.

But if I never go back to Colorado again - or, more importantly, never come back from Colorado again - you'll know why.

It's a conspiracy!