Plane vs. Car ????????

We chose of course to fly to Iowa for the funeral vs driving - for once it was a WRONG choice!!
Both of us worked a couple of hours Monday morning to get stuff organized for the week and left for Denver around 10:30am - we arrived at Patty's house in Iowa at 10:00pm that night - do the math - it was ONE LONG DAY!!!

Of course I chose NOT to take my laptop since I knew we could check our emails at Patty's - again, a wrong choice...............

Normally we go RIGHT to our gate and THEN get something to eat - this time for some unknown reason (probably since we were flying United instead of Frontier on the way out, we weren't as familiar with the places to eat and saw a cute little place and just decided to eat BEFORE we headed to the gate) - wrong choice again!!

By the time we got to the gate, we had just walked past a United customer service place and the line there was LONG - not thinking anything about it, we walked by and our gate was the next one - no one was there - so we set all our stuff down and pulled out our boarding passes, just assuming we had read the gate wrong - we hadn't - I walked over to the ticket counter and asked and the guy said "Yes, the flight was CANCELLED!!" Are you kidding??????

So of course he told us to get in the customer service line to rebook - we were NOT happy campers at all - stood in line about 45 minutes, just knowing that we were not going to get rebooked that evening and sure enough, we were rebooked the next morning!! But of course we could go standby with the other 100 people who wanted to fly out yet that day!!

We walked to the next flight gate and sat down, pondering what to do - there actually was another customer service place right there so I went up and asked HOW they did standby because I had no idea who would get first choice - it was then I found out that the standby people are chosen because of either the price they paid for their flight OR if they're a preferred flyer with United. I knew we were doomed because we never fly United to Iowa, always Frontier.

Glenn decided to check the schedules and found flights going to Des Moines, Sioux Falls, and Lincoln, along with the 2 Omaha flights - so back up to the rep to see if we could be on standby for Lincoln since our chances of getting on there were MUCH higher (of course all 3 of those flights were completely booked!!). At that point, we found out we could only be on ONE standby list so we opted for the Lincoln flight!

Back up to that gate - and in the meantime calling Patty to see how far Sioux Falls was from Sioux City to see if that would be an option and it was, in case the Lincoln flight fell through! By this time, I desperately needed some coffee and sure enough, there was a Caribou Coffee WAY at the other end so I hiked there and relished drinking that cup!!

Much of our waiting time was spent calling Glenn's mom, Jaime and Jessi and Patty!! But FINALLY they were boarding for Lincoln - we patiently waited and the gal at the gate called our names and said it was looking good - and it was - we BOTH made the standby list!! HOORAY!!

I was in row one and Glenn was in the last row - row 13 - and it wasn't a lucky seat for him at all - the flight was super rough because of the storms (and they actually had shut DIA airport down for a while because of all the lightning!) so it didn't make for a fun flight!!

Of course, I was the first one off the plane and kept waiting for more people to come - finally a lady right behind me told me that everyone on the plane had to remain seated for a while because of an emergency!!

Glenn finally appeared - I was panicking by this point, thinking something had happened to HIM - and he told me the story - we've laughed and laughed about this - apparently not long after the plane took off, this younger guy came running back towards the ONLY bathroom on the plane, holding the barf bag and running into the bathroom - Glenn's seat was right there of course - and the poor guy was NOT having fun at this point!!

But the guy never came out - NEVER - another gal came back to use the bathroom and she kept knocking and the guy kept yelling out "BUSY" - this went on and on and finally the flight attendant got involved but he just kept opening the door a little ways and yelling "BUSY".

It was time to land the plane and he would NOT come out - so of course security had to be called from the plane and when we landed, police and security and paramedics all came in to attend to the guy which is why the rest of the plane had to remain seated. He just kept telling everyone he has a hard time flying and has to spend the entire time in the bathroom - maybe the guy shouldn't fly??? You think?????

So now we're in Lincoln - of course I'd had to call Omaha and cancel our rental car there - so went to get one and Enterprise says they have NO cars to rent (since we had to return the car to Omaha as that's where our departing flight flew out of) - next to the Avis counter and yes they have a car and no problem returning it to Omaha - BUT - the price was triple what we had booked in Omaha - oh my...................we did get the girl to keep checking and did get the price down a little bit but it was sure one expensive rental car!

Luckily the drive from Lincoln to Omaha is not TOO far and we finally made it to Patty's at 10:00 that night, utterly exhausted from our all day trip - we could have driven and made it in 9 or 10 hours - but you just never know.................