Like Sands Through the Hourglass, This Was the Longest Day of Our Lives

We recently had the wonderful opportunity to return to Utah for my little sister's wedding.  This was made immensely more affordable (read: possible) by a good friend who had access to buddy passes with a particular airline.  Most emphatically, I do not want this post to come across as ungrateful.  We're so glad that we could use the passes and make it back for such a special occasion.  And the trip back home to Ohio was uneventful and worked out great, so no worries there.  However, the flight out to Utah was something that we'll probably never forget.  Here's why...

Highlights / summary:
- 22 hour day.
- Feet in all four time zones across the contiguous US in one day.
- Annoying televisions in most of the airports (turns out that most daytime tv really sucks--wait, I already knew this).
- Annoying people in some.
- A lot more people flying than expected, and thus:
- Lots of full flights with not enough room for everyone on standby.

We awoke at 4am eastern (that's 2am mountain time) to have time to finish packing before we began our epic journey.  We left the apartment at 5, and were at the airport around 5:30.  We drove ourselves, and some great friends were willing to come pick up our car (and us when we got home) so that we wouldn't have to pay $50 for a week of parking.  We split a tasty Chili's breakfast burrito at the airport (only $8!) right before boarding.  The first flight left Columbus for Chicago at 6:30, and we got on without any trouble.

Chicago was another story.  We spent most of the time running from gate to gate (fortunately, just once to another terminal and back), getting on the standby list of any flight heading west.  For the first couple hours, we were a little more selective because we wanted to fly to Denver, then to Salt Lake.  No dice.  So we kept trying, and would be standing next to a new gate every 20 minutes or so, listening and hoping that our names would be called.  Finally we were able to get on a flight to Omaha, Nebraska.

In Omaha, waiting for a flight.

The airport in Omaha was much smaller than the one in Chicago.  This was good because it wasn't so stinking crowded.  This was bad because there were far fewer flights leaving the city.  We arrived around 1pm central, and hoped to catch one of two flights around 2:30.  We split a Godfather's personal pan pizza for lunch (~$5, probably one of our better food deals at the airport--the other was Popeye's in Vegas) and waited until 5:30 when a flight was leaving for Phoenix, and another for Vegas.  During the wait, the tv droned on and on in the background, playing Days of their Lives, and a handful of other soap opera dreck that all looked the same.  Boo.  After sitting and waiting for a while, my legs needed some stretching.  I stood up and stretched various ways while reading my book, and this initiated a conversation with a nice old couple sitting across from us.  Apparently I was an odd sight.  Anyway, we lucked out and were able to board the one to Vegas.  After thanking the airline employee profusely, we hefted our carryons and got on the plane.

We arrived in Vegas around 6pm, with two more flights leaving for SL before morning.  We were unable to get on the flight at 6:55, so we started looking at our options. 1) We could rent a car and drive to SL, arriving probably around 2 or 3am.  Once we looked at pricing, though (~$200 plus gas for just one night), we changed our minds.  2) We could get a hotel room for the night for about $30 and then catch the 6am flight the next morning.  This was a pretty good option, but I didn't want to deal with shuttles and such.  Lazy, I know.  3) Have a sleepover at the airport!  What with the bouncing floor and noisy slot machines, it would have been a long night.  We hadn't finalized our decision by the time the next flight was boarding.

We sat, listening, but couldn't hear anything the gate agent was saying.  We could see that she was talking into the PA, but for the first time that day, we couldn't pick up what the agent had said.  So we hustled over to her to check and see if, just maybe, we had been called.  Sure enough, she had called our names twice and we hadn't heard a thing.  Lucky for us we checked.  So we got on the plane and Jess was lucky enough to babysit a 7 year old and 9 year old the whole flight home.

We arrived in SL, exhausted but happy, at about midnight.  My folks were kind enough to come pick us up (and we'd had a couple other offers from wonderful friends and family to do the same) and shuttle us back to their place where we crashed (in the sleeping sense, not the automobile sense).

So yeah, a rough day for flying, but we were grateful that we could do it on the cheap, and for all of the support that the buddy pass friend gave us throughout the day, helping us find the flights we needed and such.  And now we're really happy to be back home in Ohio.  Med school orientation begins tomorrow morning.  Here we go!