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Flight Letter: Pepband Member Trapped in Airport

Hello all, I’m sure this is just what you all want to do is read about my travels of January 7th… and I’m hoping its only the 7th. I’m currently in the airport at SLC as I’m writing this (obviously wrote it and added to it no doubt before sending it off).

Left at 6:45 am this morning and it was still snowing.. I don’t think it ever stopped snowing truthfully since the day before. I’ve never seen it snow so hard and for so long and not amount to much other than a half a foot of snow which could drift the instant the wind thinks about blowing (got to love dry snow). We made it in decent time to the airport, after listening to nearly ever school district in the area being cancelled (minus Blue Mountain.. the brave souls that they are apparently.). It was a little icy and foggy. Visibility was low, though we could still see a decent amount. The snow plow was constantly going. Well, there was a United flight before mine and they got them so far before they all had to disembark and walk back to the terminal. That flight was cancelled. The Seattle flight, cancelled. By now its about time we should have left and we are all sitting in the terminal wondering what we were going to do. I think nearly everyone on that plane has a connection at Salt Lake. We were all wondering what to do if we will miss it. Finally, they gave the boarding call (one hour later) saying that we were the only flight leaving Pasco that day. Snow never letting up. We boarded a very cozy plane and waited to head off. Our pilot announced to us that we can look forward to the exact same weather in Salt Lake. The reason they were late (one being SLC, the second being unable to land at Pasco immediately). The guy next to me wondered why every other flight was cancelled but ours. Wondered if United was wimpy or Delta was gutty. However, amongst a round of applause by our mostly young passenger group (lots of little kids…..) we made it into the air with some dips and bumps. Flight was smooth till we got to SLC where we made a great landing (more stomach dropping bumps but nothing terrible.. unlike the little girl behind me saying that we were going to die. Nice and comforting.)


I look at my clock. Oh look, my connecting flight left five minutes ago. So here I am stuck. Instead of an hour layover, I get a four hour one. My flight leaves at 6:35.. hoping I even get a seat on this flight.. I just have a boarding pass. If not, I guess that means I get to overnight it here…. Or something.. I’m just hoping it works. But there is no end of trouble here. Lots of delayed flights. One particular one is because they can’t get the door shut on the plane. A small child is eagerly waiting… they were boarded but they had to unload them all. They’ve been here an additional 30 minutes so far. The kid is pointing out all the working planes to his mom hoping its his plane. I don’t blame him, I’m ready to go too. Course they are riding a prop plane, I’m on a little bigger jet.


The highlight so far has to go to the pilots of the first flight I was on (and well, as of right now, the only flight). They were quite good natured and excellent pilots in my opinion. Our captain informed us that if we were unable to make a landing in SLC we would go ahead and detour; to somewhere in Mexico where its warm. I figure we can just go on to Tucson, its warm there and I’d have no trouble lol.


Kept myself busy so far by reading one and a half books on Norton the traveling Scottish Fold. I gave up reading to type this awhile.. get stuff down, and warm up. (hey the computer is a great heater). The door was open a good portion of time behind me and it was cold. What can I do? Lol. Maybe I should stop now before I find more things to ramble about. Like the snow, how SLC hasn’t nearly as much snow as back home. But I suppose I’m leaving at the right time. Supposedly its supposed to warm up into the 40s. That will leave for a nice combination of mush during the day (slush for those of you who don’t know what its like to live in that weather and only hear technical terms) and frozen ice sheets at night (frozen ice sheets for those same people, though not a ‘technical’ term.) Yes most definitely need to stop now before I go into worse jokes or poor attempts to humor myself out of boredom (though I think I’m more tired than anything). Hopefully you find this amusing. If not I suppose you can forget you ever read it and just skip to the end where I hopefully will say I’m safe and sound at the apartment in Tucson. Course if you waited this long to read and follow those instructions, you might as well just keep plugging along lol. Only an hour to go before I go see if I have a seat on this flight.. So this is where I leave now to find other things to do and let you all get back to whatever you are doing (or continue reading the update that I will no doubt type when I get back if I’m not comatose from traveling and waiting for so long). Till then.


Saga continues. 6:35 flight was delayed until 7:45. So I was stuck here for around 6 hours. No big deal right? Its getting on to 7pm and I anticipate the arrival of the plane to board. 7:20 rolls along and what do I see, the time change to 8:30… yes indeed, my flight will not leave until then; delayed once again. I decide to investigate. The flight people are really nice, all have been quite helpful and cheerful. And as most of you know, I don’t ask things in anything but a nice polite manner so it was all good. Actually its quite amusing even though I would like nothing better than being in the apartment now. So at any rate, I inquire what was going on. Seems the plane was stuck in Montana. Now I can believe that they’re getting snow. They are as of 7:30ish over Idaho right now. Supposed to get here 8:06 and we start boarding or something around 8:30. Now that this is the 3rd delay of the day, I am not getting my hopes up. But, the plane is in the air so that is a really good sign. Another funny thing is that I’ve seen 2 flights leave for Pasco. Apparently Pasco will take arrivals even though they were not letting any other flights go. I just saw off one group of Pascoites (what I have decided to call the people on my plane now) as they headed off to their destination. I don’t know if I’m the only one left, but I haven’t seen a familiar face yet. (quote unquote that is as I don’t know anyone). So tempting to hop the Phoenix flight and drive to Tucson.. in what I don’t know as my car is in Tucson, but I’m sure there’s a way… would get there faster lol. So my flight leaves at 8:30, my guess is that we’ll be in the air before 9 (I’m giving them wide berth here, after all there’s snow out there though its long since stopped falling). 2 hours approximately in flight puts it at 11pm. I’ll be out of that airport and to my car by midnight.. and in my apartment by 12:30 am. Only to have a game the next day.. ick.. I hope its an afternoon game. Course by the time I get this sent off it’ll probably be next week, but hey, I made the effort no? So that leaves me with several hours in SLC… I doubt I’ll complain about any 2 hour layovers for a while. 1:40 ish is when I got here… its nearly 7:40 now. That’s six hours exactly so I’ll be pushing seven hours when we “leave” at 8:30. I’m not upset about it really at all.. as I said its kind of funny. What isn’t funny is I didn’t bring much to do. I’m nearly done with the second and last book in my bag, but I no longer feel like reading about Norton the cat anymore. Spent 6 quality hours with him, I think I’m done. And spent time writing this and doing a bit of poking around. Which is what I’ll do after I finish laying it out here. Yes I will apologize for this being long once again. But hey, I might as well tell all and get it over with in one swoop than recall it all individually.


So what do I do with my time other than what I’ve said.. Well I tend to look at all the flights leaving (always wishing that mine was) and try to figure out the states. Kind of fun really.. I’m getting to recognize these cities since I think that’s all that Skywest goes to. Which by the way there is a Skywest United too. Found that confusing in Pasco when I tried to find the ticket counter (which has since moved as they are doing the eternal building project there. But the added seats in the new addition to the one terminal are great!) Another thing I’ve started wondering after I did a lay out of the times is if Park and Save will have a shuttle going out that late.. and if it does I hope it takes me to the car. I mean, it picked us up right there behind my car as soon as we got there. Now isn’t that service? I just hope they’ll do it again.. Probably will if I’m the only one lol. I just hope my luggage greats me happily in the airport in Tucson the same time I come in. I don’t care if its soaked with washer fluid stuff I just want to have my suitcase (some of you may recall my incident coming back to Tucson last year). Ooo, a new town.. Kalispell. Never heard of it (provided my eyes are fairing well, the sign is kind of far away.) Well if I’m to record the rest of my journey (which I’m praying will not be worth mentioning), I best stop now or I’ll have enough writing to publish a small novel.


Conclusion: Wow! What a trip. Okay so I was right, we left at 9pm. Though we boarded around 8:45ish. There was another flight that was to leave at 8:33 while we were to leave at 8:30. Well, the other flight (both to Tucson if you didn’t guess) boarded first, so a lot of people switched over to that flight. Well, our plane finally came in and we boarded. A pretty thin group we were. Sitting right across the way from the other plane. Guess who left first : ). We got to leave before they did. Sweet irony no? Smooth flying all the way into Tucson. And wow did it ever change! The carousel area is a lot different… or at least from what I remember. Kind of threw me for a bit of a loop. Though I got my luggage just fine (though we wondered about that as we were all standing there and no one was taking luggage. One guy spoke up and asked if someone could please grab a luggage, any luggage so we didn’t feel stupid). We were one of those plane groups ;). We even asked our Stewardess to redo the air mask demonstration and to do the seatbelt demonstration in English.


At any rate, I’m back in Tucson. Tired as can be but I can’t sleep as I’ve got a million things to do… Nothing unusual there. So with that, I wish you all a great semester (as I will now sequester myself into a small corner and rock back and forth saying ‘no more delays no more delays’) Talk to y’all later.


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