travel nightmare

This is my nightmare travel story. It was last Labor Day weekend. My husband & I were excited to be able to visit our oldest son for the first time during Parents’ Weekend at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. This is his second year, and we really miss him, so we were really looking forward to the whole event, especially since we'd missed the traditional visit that usually takes place during the cadet's first year there.

This was right after the London scare, so airports were on high alert. We arrived the stated "two hours early" on a Thursday only to find after three hours that our flight would be delayed, and then eventually canceled altogether. We were unable to get another flight, but we finally did after my husband said we would travel all night long if that's what it took. (It didn't.)

With each of us on a cell phone running with our luggage to the next terminal to catch the flight and to update arrangements for the car rental & hotel (since we’d fly into Denver instead of Colorado Springs now), we were relieved to find the right line for our new flight. Just as we were about to put our things on the belt to be scanned, we were waved over to a different line where we were told we’d been randomly selected to be frisk-searched. I guess when you’re selected like that, it’s for the entire trip because we were frisk-searched before EVERY flight after that.

We were nearly the last ones on the plane, but arrived on time in the first city and then at Denver. It was 12:30 a.m. by this time, and we were an hour away from the hotel. I’d gotten directions from the hotel clerk so we thought we were set. We took the right exit and drove so far that we were no longer on the rental car map. I called the hotel again, and the guy repeated the directions. We’d been driving an hour & a half, and my husband was starting to feel nauseous. We drove back the way we came and started over, this time realizing that there was NO sign identifying the street we were to turn onto & had driven MILES too far the first time.

We walked into the hotel at 2 in the morning. My poor sweetheart crawled into bed at 2:15 and immediately got right back up and puked in the bathroom, where he remained for the next 2 1/2 hours, retching every 10 minutes. It was horrible.

The plan was to meet our son at 5 & go to classes with him. Miraculously, he stopped throwing up just in time to get cleaned up & drive over. You can just imagine what he looked like…

By the time 3rd period rolled around, he was a zombie. Because guests weren’t allowed to stay in the cadet’s room without the cadet, he had to find someplace else to lie down & rest, just for a bit. After class I went to look for him and found him leaning against a wall, like someone had propped him up and pressed him there.

He felt “iffy” for the next 48 hours, as he sipped soup while WE ate normally.

Little weird things happened the whole time. For example, on Sunday we went to the Academy Chapel where our son runs the PowerPoint program for the 10:00 service. The computer turned itself off four times before staying shut down altogether. A guard almost kept me from going back to sit upstairs with my husband & son after I came down to go to the bathroom.

We drove up & down this one street and never could find the castle we wanted to visit, even with map in hand. (And we really are not dumb people… =)

On our return trip home, we got bumped from our flight out of Colorado Springs and had to RACE up to Denver. There, the check-in lady wouldn’t accept the tickets we’d been given & we had to figure out for ourselves that we had to check in first with the airline that bumped us in order to get the “right” tickets for the new flight. This made us so late that we had to RUN in order to get to the gate on time, and I’m no runner. I wore flat sandals & got shin splints from all the running we did that weekend. I had a margarita once we were in the air, and I never tasted anything so good in my life. We got frisk-searched both flights home, but eventually we DID get home. Man, I love my own bed!!!