A bad vacation

As it turned out, the timing of my vacation was not good. I was going to go the week before but that was the week of Linda’s high school reunion so I delayed it a week to be there for her birthday. That was a mistake. She was stressed out that she was turning 70 and, in addition, had planned a big birthday bash that didn’t include any family members and was afraid something bad was going to happen to ruin her plans. As most of you know, it’s not pleasant to be around a stressed out person all day every day so my son Michael and I tried to make the best of it by ourselves, making sure to keep away from Linda as much as possible.

As it turned out, the birthday was a success with no problems at all and I took that opportunity to remind Linda that 75% of the things we worry about never happen and of the things that DO happen, over 90% of them aren’t nearly as bad as we thought they were going to be. That logic pretty much fell on deaf ears.

Then on the drive from Russellville to Fayetteville, a light in Linda’s jeep came on and she freaked out again. Michael looked up the light in the owner’s manual and read to Linda that when the Jeep was driven at high speeds during hot weather, the light would come on but again, the logical explanation fell on deaf ears and she was doing irrational things like pulling over and stopping to make sure she wasn’t driving in low gear when the indicator light clearly showed her in drive. As we got into the Fayetteville traffic stream and she slowed down, the light went off like Michael indicated it would but that wasn’t good enough for her.

The next morning she said she didn’t sleep a wink worrying about the car and they were going to go back to Russellville that day instead of taking me to the airport the following day. When she makes up her mind to do something, there’s no talking her out of it so I didn’t even try.

If you think I’m talking behind her back, I’m not. She called me Sunday night and apologized for acting irrationally in the things I’ve just mentioned, the reasons why she thought she did it and hoping that I would come back and we could try again. By then, since it was over, I laughed about it although her behavior stressed me out too and I told her we would try it again around Christmas.

Where the trains run in the basement of Denver International Airport something else bad happened. I was walking towards them to change concourses when I felt ill like I had felt only one other time and headed toward the wall to sit down but I didn’t make it. I passed out (fainted, lost consciousness, whatever you want to call it) and was caught by two people before I hit the ground which was lucky for me. Also lucky for me was one of the two was a doctor who stayed with me, along with his wife, until the paramedics arrived and proved to me once again that there are still good people in the world because he was genuinely concerned about my well-being. When the paramedics arrived, they gave me an EKG with all the attachments that comes with it which was embarrassing with hundreds of people walking by but I wanted to be sure I wasn’t having another heart attack which, fortunately, I wasn’t.

All my vitals checked out and they gave me permission to go on about my business.

The doctor asked me when my flight was leaving and I told him it had been delayed an hour to 6:30 and he said I had probably missed the flight because it was already 6:30 and I told him he obviously wasn’t familiar with my airline.

Now, that was a jab at Boutique Airlines even though the doctor didn’t know it but as I thought about it the next day, I think my negative experiences with Boutique is my bad luck rather than their incompetence. I’ve flown into Denver four times since they took over our local airline service to catch flights with them home and the flights have been seriously delayed three of those times and the fourth time the flight was canceled which kept me in the airport all night long until another plane departed for McCook the next morning. I’m thinking the jinx is on me and not them.

I talked to one of the ground crew when I got home and she told me the only late hours she had ever put in at the airport involved late planes and me. And it only happens on flights TO McCook and never to Denver. Flights to Denver have always been okay, flights home to McCook have never been okay.

So my advice to you is that if you see me waiting at the Boutique ticket counter for a flight to McCook, you’d better try and make other arrangements because you not getting there is a distinct possibility.

So even though I got home at midnight instead of the scheduled arrival time of 7:30, I DID get home.

But my carry-on bag didn’t. It went to Cortez!