Friday evening we began packing for our return to Raleigh and Martinsville. It was time to check in with Delta, and print our boarding passes. I called the desk, and they said they would happily help us with that operation. Jerry and I gathered our reservation information, and hiked down to registration. I gave the nice fellow my information, he pulled it up on Delta, and it wouldn’t allow me to check in---said to check with Delta. (of course they just sent me an Email that said it was time to check in) We had him try Jerry’s information, and presto---printed boarding passes and no problem. So I hiked back up to the suite, called Delta, held on the phone for a while, talked to several folks only to have them tell me nothing was wrong. I hiked back down to the desk; he tried it again, and presto---printed boarding passes. Guess the Delta folks just wanted to hear my irritated voice. Go figure.
So Friday night/Saturday morning, we packed and made preparations to head home. Saturday morning dawned pretty much like all our other days in Vail, sunny, cool, and beautiful. Came check out time, we loaded up all our belongings and headed for Denver. Funny thing happened: we got on the road, and the car began giving us warnings about the traction control malfunctioning. We got out the book, read about it, and tried the universal fix of stopping, turning off the engine, waiting a little while then restarting. No success, but since the car seemed to be behaving fine, we chalked it up to computer gremlins, and went on. It is a 2 hr+ drive to Denver Airport, and we had allowed ourselves time to gas up the car, and ride the bus from the rental place to the terminal. As we approached the stop we had programmed for gas near the airport, the warning on the car switched from traction control to low tire pressure. We thought that odd, but while we were fueling, we noticed the left rear tire looked a little wimpy. At this time we were close to the airport, so we just piled in and went on. When we pulled into the rental car return lane, we got out and were amazed to see the left rear tire looking really wimpy. We unloaded our stuff, and told the nice rental car girl about the problem. She thanked us and off we went. Talking about it later, we came up with a theory. We are guessing that we got some kind of leak in the left rear tire Friday night/Saturday morning. Being an AWD (all wheel drive) version of the Ford Edge, the computer must have sensed the decrease in rolling diameter of the low tire and interpreted it as a stability control issue. It warned us of that most of the trip until the actual tire pressure fell below the threshold of the pressure sensor, and then started telling us about that. These modern cars are so complex, they can fool themselves.
We arrived at the Denver airport, checked in, and had a nice lunch. We then headed off to our gate to catch our plane. Denver has the ubiquitous (for airports) subway trains that run between terminals. As we were boarding the train, the doors were beginning to close just as we got on. Vickie was scared (because she saw a guy get eaten by the doors on the METRO in DC) and screamed. Everyone on the train car just about had a heart attack. Ironically the train voice came on and said someone was blocking the doors just as the cars started to move. In spite of this, we arrived at our gate successfully and prepared to leave. We noticed the plane we were going to get on was a 737, which seemed to be a little small for a cross country flight. Then they started talking about the flight being overbooked, and asking for volunteers to get bumped. Eventually all was well, and we boarded the flight. We have all flown quite a bit, but never in our recent memory have we been on such a packed airplane. Every seat was full of the 6 across seating, and the pitch of the seats in this particular plane was so tight I couldn’t even get my knees in without them touching the seat in front of me. On top of that, something was wrong with the heating/cooling system, and though the outside temp showed a balmy -31, the inside of the plane was like a sauna. Dear Delta, your flight last night from Denver to Atlanta sucked, regards Wes.
After suffering the Delta torture flight for 3 hours, we arrived in Atlanta to a very scary landing. Jerry said the pilot must have been an ex carrier jockey, cause he bounced it in and then stopped so hard peoples glasses were flying off forward. I commented it probably had something to do with the plane being SLAP ASS FULL of people and luggage. We successfully negotiated the Atlanta airport subway (no screaming this time) and arrived at our next flight gate. We were pleased to see the plane was an old MD88 with 3 and 2 seating. I was able to get us exit row seats across from Jerry and Brenda, and we were all set. Until, we got on board, and while taxiing, the man behind Jerry and Brenda began to make these horrible hacking and snorting noises. This went on all through take off and part way into the flight till he fell asleep. We are hoping he didn’t have a serious communicable disease. We arrived OK in Raleigh, and since we were so late, they had to wake up the luggage crew to unload the plane. They interpreted it for us (standing around the empty baggage carousel) as a baggage system failure. Except Brenda knew the real reason, she was watching out the window, and saw one lone guy show up to unload our baggage. Baggage system=fail due to lack of interest.
We waited a while and finally got the bus to the long term parking. Jerry’s van was just as he had left it and $48 later we were on our way home. Jerry got us home safe, and all was well. We groused on the way home about the perils of cross country traveling, but were happy to be home safe.
More later,
wes
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