Colorado 2011, Part One

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I seem to be on a trend of going cold places in winter.

I don’t quite know how that happened, except to say that we aren’t rally devoted to the idea… it just happens.

Our trip to Colorado at the end of February was initiated by a work conference Heather had been asked to attend.

So, let me back up for a second… You remember the speeds we each used when cross-country skiing? I know it’s a single data point, but it stands as a clue that Heather might not be as interested in high-speed winter sports as I am. That being said, when there was a trip to a ski resort in the middle of winter, I was kind of excited. Heather thought it would be fun… in her defense though, she had to work part of the time, so I had a lot of reasons to be more excited than she was.

Anyway, exceptions aside, we were both ready for a few days away from work.

Heather actually managed a few more days away than I did, heading down to KC two days early to visit some friends and then spend an entire day babysitting our one and most favorite nephew ! By all accounts it was fun, but more work than she expected! Who knew an 11-month-old could be so much work?

We boarded a plane from KC to Denver bright and early Wednesday morning. Thanks to the time-zone weirdness, we landed almost the same time we took off. Then off to the rental place. Apparently rental cars are in high demand leaving from the Denver airport on a Wednesday, not a problem though, we have a reservation! Only, the lady at the desk told us our reservation didn’t exist.

This is the point where you would expect the customer service person, the closest thing to a rental car expert we can find in the moment, to spring into action, providing us options and ultimately a car.

We got a blank stare. With some prompting we were assured that there “aren’t any cars left… at any of the companies here” when asked “you mean there isn’t a single car left to rent in Denver?” she said yes. The next question was just “so… what do we do now?” She pointed us to the shuttle-bus stop, and said that we could get back to the airport on the next bus, “maybe one of the other companies has a car I don’t know about”

Back at the airport, we power-walked our way to the only rental-car booth with a huge “cars available” sign sill showing. (it really felt like we should run… but one doesn’t want to stand out in the airport, who knows what they might mistake you for.) Let me tell you about the booth, unlike the other booths, this one lacked a few key items: name we had ever heard of before, a computer, a phone, any furnishings beyond the counter and a chair for the solitary staff member working the booth. The guy assured us “don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of ‘us’ ether, before I got this job… but I guess ‘we’ are big out west” He then assured us they had cars left, talked from memory about the price and options we would have, then wrote our desired car on a scrap of paper. Scrap of paper in hand, we headed out to yet another bus stop. After watching every other rental-car bus pass about three times, our bus finally arrived. The ride was normal, until we got to the ‘T’ intersection leading where you would turn to go into the rental car row. Our bus turned left instead of right. About a mile in the wrong direction and we were in the parking lot for a mostly vacant industrial strip. There were rental cars though! Dirty rental cars, but rental cars. Inside we learned that they were having problems with the car wash, but not to worry the car would be fine. A few sheets of paperwork later, and we had some keys! The instructions were to: “just wander around pushing the panic button on the remote, you will find it eventually”

Low and behold, that tactic worked perfectly, despite it’s lack of professionalism. Once in our car, we found that it had less than 300 miles on it, and was wonderfully clean– on the inside. After that, we stopped for a quick and uneventful lunch and headed up to check into the place we were staying.

hmm sorry I didn’t make it to a part where we have a picture, but the wall-of-text is sufficient to make me think I should close part 1.

-Jordan

Sunset Beach

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I went to North Carolina with her parents the second week of June. The place we stayed is apparently kind of a tradition for Heather’s family, called “Sunset Beach.” The area is actually an island of sorts, being cut off from the mainland by the “Intracoastal Waterway“, meaning that you have to wait for a little draw bridge to be closed to make it out to the island. They are in the process of building a much more substantial bridge, but for now the access remains pretty rustic.

Once we got to the beach house, we had an ambitious week of not doing all that much planned! Besides walking on the beach, and playing in the waves, I managed to squeeze in a little reading.

I read (in chronological order):

  • The Lost Fleet Book 5
  • The Millionaire Next Door
  • The Lost Fleet Book 6
  • Altered Carbon
  • Black Hawk Down

I will probably do some sort of a micro review of most of these, but the short version is that I enjoyed them all. Heather spent quite a bit of time reading too, we stuck together in the shaded deck of the beach house while most people were down on the beach. She didn’t manage quite as many books as me, I think in part because she was constantly distracted by our little nephew Holden.

By the end of the week, Heather and Holden were getting along well enough that she could hold him for extended periods of time without him crying. Everyone at the house enjoyed having him there, babies just provide so much entertainment it seems.

Mid way through the week, it was declared “Family Golf Day” (another tradition I guess) and the majority of us went to one of the many golf courses in the area. Now, Heather and I have been married for 13 months, so you might think we would have found the time to go golfing, or at least go to a driving range so she could show me how to swing a club. Somehow though, we hadn’t. I was more than a little concerned going into the even that I would be woefully outclassed, but I quickly discovered two things: I am at least competent at golf, and the “Family Golf Day” includes plenty of people who aren’t all that good. I think it helped that Heather and a few of the people on our team were providing great coaching, but I really enjoyed playing, and felt that I did ok!

The only really eventful part of our trip was the return. We started out early Saturday morning driving back to Charlotte NC, where our flight would then layover in Detroit, and eventually take us to Kansas City. We were hoping to then push through and drive back to Des Moines that night giving us an entire day home before going back to work.

Thing started off on a sort of bad foot when we were following the lead car through back-roads so small they didn’t even have lines painted on them. We assumed they had done some research on the map and had found some sort of optimal route to beat all the traffic going home from the beach. It was a scenic drive, if somewhat unnerving. We later found out they had mis-configured their GPS to pick routes with “no traffic” and really hadn’t meant to take us off the beaten path.

Once we got to the airport, we found out that our flight was at least two hours delayed, and possibly more thanks to major problems in Atlanta. This was going to be a problem as our connecting flight to KC was going to leave before we even boarded our plane to Detroit! The ticket agent managed to book us on the first flight to KC the next morning from Detroit, while still preserving our tickets on the flight we were destined to miss that day. Apparently that was bending the rules fairly aggressively. The rest of the day went almost exactly like it looked like it was going to, we boarded our flight about 2.5 hours later than we were suppose to, missing our flight to KC. An hour or so in line at the Delta counter in Detroit and we had two meal vouchers each and a hotel voucher for each couple in our group. Six dollars will not buy a real extravagant dinner, but we were more than ready to just grab something to eat quick and go to bed.

The next morning we got to the airport bright and early, got checked in and made our way to the gate. Things were looking good, no delays! Then the gate agent started paging that the flight was over-booked, and would anyone be willing to wait for a later flight. We were really concerned that maybe we weren’t going to get home after all. 40 minutes of this paging with nobody willing to give up their seat, and a woman who hadn’t been quite so early to the gate discovered that she didn’t have a seat on the plane. She went into total melt-down… It wasn’t pretty, I haven’t ever seen anything like it. After a few minutes Heather’s sister felt merciful, and offered to give up her seat. It turned out that she would not be able to get on the plane unless three people gave up their seats. After a few minutes of talking Kelsey, Jim and Pam all decided to give up their seats.

We boarded right on time and made it to Kansas City with no problems, but if you ask me there was a real air of “escaping in the nick of time” getting on the flight. The three people who stayed behind, managed to get on the noon flight (two hours behind ours) and made it with no other complications.

Despite the… adventure getting back, the vacation was very relaxing. Both Heather and I enjoyed the time to just slow down for a while.

-Jordan

Florida

Posted on by Jordan

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Over a week later, and I still haven’t managed to get a good post up on this trip 😦

Well, here is a quick summary:   (if you consider 1000+ words quick)

Wednesday night:

We left Omaha kind of late, didn’t get to Kansas City until 11:30 or so. Found out we needed to be at the airport by 6:00am the next morning.

Thursday:

Got up way too early, Heather’s dad drove us to the airport. Found out AirTran charges $15 for the first checked bag, checked one large bag, headed for the security checkpoint. KC airport was doing their inaugural run of the new luggage scanner, stood in line for a long time. Our flight stayed at the gate an extra 15 minutes so everyone could make it through the security checkpoint. Landed in Atlanta, practically ran to the gate for our connection. We made it there just in time to have them call general boarding. Landed in Orlando,  finally stepped outside and remembered what hot and humid feels like. Got a rental car, found out Budget Rent-a-car has run out of Florida maps. The guy at the counter sketches a rough map to our destination on the back of our reservation paper. We then drove about an hour and a half out to Palm Coast. We found out on the way that we were running late, so I dropped Heather off at the nail place, for the bridesmaids nail appointment, and then headed to the hotel. I checked in, hauled our bags up to the room and then passed out on the bed. Heather called a few hours later to tell me the guys were going out, and if I wanted to go with them I should get up and moving. The guys (including me) went to a Mexican place on the coast, and then hung out at a bar for a while. It was a fairly entertaining night, despite not really knowing anyone there. Heather was out with the Bridesmaids, I can’t remember what she said they did, but she really liked the other bridesmaids and assorted friends who were there.

Friday:

Heather and I slept in as much as we could, grabbed some breakfast at the hotel, and then I dropped her off for a wedding event nearby. A luncheon of some sort, I can’t speak for what Heather was doing during the day. I drove to the beach, and read until I started worrying about getting sunburned. Leaving the beach, I drove along the coastal highway for a little while, just enjoying the view, then started looking for someplace to have lunch. It was a rather late lunch, but my perspective on time was pretty much out the window at this point in the trip anyway. After lunch I headed back to the hotel, napped, and read until Heather got back. We got cleaned up and headed to the rehearsal.

The wedding location was beautiful. I spent some time just enjoying looking around the area, and then looking for interesting pictures to take of the rehearsal. It was the first rehearsal I have been to where I didn’t have a role of some sort in the wedding. Rehearsals are less interesting to watch than to be in. I probably could have been more aggressive taking pictures, but there was a professional on hand, and I didn’t want to get in the way. The dinner that followed was really nice, but for the sake of brevity, I wont give you the play-by-play.

Saturday:

Heather and I got up early and drove out to the beach. We were able to spend about an hour walking along the beach. It was easily my favorite hour of the entire weekend. Heather wouldn’t allow any pictures, something about having rolled out of bed and gone straight to the beach. You will just have to take my word for it that she was beautiful, and the beach was amazing in the early morning. We then headed back to the hotel, where Heather was soon picked up by the bridal party on their way to the salon to get hair done. This left me with something like seven hours to kill, so I headed back to the beach, dressed to swim. I soon discovered that the water was really cold, and that swimming by yourself is kind of boring. The waves were kind of rough, so I don’t know that Heather would have been up for swimming, even if it hadn’t been so cold. I then headed back into town to find some lunch, and a new book, having finished both of the books I brought with me.

I spent the afternoon sleeping, and reading, then headed over to the wedding. Conditions for the wedding were perfect. A very light breeze was blowing, and the temperature was something like 75 degrees. It may have been a little warm for the guys in the tuxes, but from where I was setting it couldn’t have been better. I won’t go into detail of the wedding, Heather keeps telling me I describe things in odd ways, but the short version is that it was beautiful.

After the wedding, we danced a little, walked down by the beach, and realized what time we would have to get up to make our flight the next day. All of those things were memorable, two of them because they were fun. By the time we got back to the hotel and into bed it was midnight, setting us up perfectly for the next day!

Sunday:

We started the day at 4:20 (EST), and managed to be packed and on the road by shortly after 5. An hour and a half later we managed to find our way into the car return area of the Orlando airport, despite their “signage so bad you would think its personal” policy with respect to rental returns. We stood in a number of lines eventually making it to our flight just as they called for boarding, leaving just enough time to hit the bathrooms before piling onto the plane. It is at this point that I started reading “Dauntless” its 304 pages long. By the time we landed (the captain said something about a headwind slowing us down) I was 3/4 of the way through the book. We landed in Kansas City, and Heather’s mom picked us up. We napped for an hour or so, and then went to lunch. After lunch we loaded up and drove to Omaha. I didn’t feel like I could sleep until I unwound some, so I ended up finishing the book, bringing my grand total to 3 for the weekend…

Speaking of books, this post got really really long, sorry. It should have been a multi-post thing, but here it is.

-Jordan