So on Thursday, June 6th, I got up incredibly early (like 3am Eastern early!) and made my way to the airport to catch a flight from NY to Denver Colorado. I’m not gonna lie, I was excited, scared, nervous and sad all rolled into a tight little bundle! I was leaving Darling Hubby and my boys for nearly a week, boarding a plane all alone, switching planes in Chicago, hoping my luggage would do the same and excited to be visiting a completely new and beautiful state and staying with some awesome friends, their cats and meeting their cool friends.
Sunset over Southwest
I snapped the above picture of my plane from my gate around 5:20am as the sun was peaking up over the horizon after saying good-by to my family and making my way into the airport to figure out what I had to do and where I had to go. Thankfully, it was very easy to find where I needed to go and after checking my bag I made my way through security. There was only a small line at 5am (my flight left at 6:25) so I was through pretty quickly and it was pretty painless, too. I just hope that the woman I let go in front of me at the scanner was able to catch her flight. She was running very late and was really thinking she was going to be left behind!
I ended up sitting at the gate for a short period of time knitting on my Van Gohg sunflower socks. I talked to a couple people about knitting and that calmed my nerves a bit. I was still pretty scared to be getting on a plane alone. I chose to sit by the window so I could see the clouds and was just behind the right wing. It turns out that I wasn’t alone in my being a nervous flyer. While the plane was not a full flight I did end up having an older couple sit in the row with me and the woman told me that her husband was also nervous. I was actually really glad that I had another nervous flyer sitting with me because he talked my ear off and it really helped me to calm down.
Here are some pictures I snapped from my seat at the wing – and no, I didn’t see anything on the wing! lol I saw all sorts of different cloud types from puffy clouds to smooth clouds that went from horizon to horizon and seemed to curve around the earth…
At take off, my seatmates and I joked about the seat back pocket insert, in particular the “bracing position.” It turns out that we needed the bracing position as we landed at Midway in Chicago. lol I think the pilot slammed on the brakes, tossed out the anchor and let out the parachute. My seatmates were also heading to Denver, but unfortunately were were not scheduled to be on the same plane. Their plane left shortly after we landed and I had about an hours worth of wait time, which ended up being extended because the flight crew for our plane had just come in on another flight, had to disembark that plane and then make their way to ours and ready our plane for take off. We left about 45 minutes later than scheduled, but the way I look at it, I got extra knitting time in.
Blues Brothers Statues in Midway
I’m actually glad that the flights happened in the order they did and not reversed. My flight from Chicago to Denver was actually pretty boring and lonely and had I not had my mind taken off of everything during the first flight I think I would have been more nervous than I was switching planes and starting again. Midway to Denver was a full flight, so I was guaranteed to have seatmates. I again had a window seat, taken so I could hopefully see the mountains as we came into Colorado, and the guy on the aisle seat looked like he was ready to puke and drank ginger ale the whole flight, and the 20 something girl that sat in the middle seat was the absolute last person on the plane, never said word one to either of us, popped her headphones in and sat scowling the entire time. I’m thankful I had my I-pod, knitting and the view to keep my occupied.
While I was able to see the Rocky Mountains as we flew toward the airport, I wasn’t able to get any good pictures because they made us shut down all electronics for landing. It was ok because I knew I’d have ample opportunity to see and take some amazing pictures.
The landing into Denver wasn’t as bad as the landing into Midway, thankfully, and despite getting such a late start out of Chicago, we landed 5 minutes early. I think we had some good tailwinds. I was a bit worried about finding my way around Denver International as it’s a much bigger airport than the Albany International that I left from. I had no trouble taking the underground train from Gate C into baggage claim and was easily able to find where I needed to go and quickly spotted Michael waiting for me at the top of the escalator.
I then met up with Barbara who was waiting for me over at Baggage Claim. My bag made it, too! lol It was a good reunion all around! lol
Now, by this point I was starving. I didn’t eat much prior to leaving and really only had a banana and a few grapes and some complementary OJ – I couldn’t eat the crackers they gave us on the plane and decided to save the little peanut packs for the kids back home.
Since it was almost lunchtime (Colorado time) we stopped at this awesome restaurant called the White Chocolate Cafe. Now, I’m soy free and Barbara and Michael are soy and gluten free, so to make things easier for the week, I decided to add gluten free to my diet as well. I really have to commend the WCC on the way they handle allergies. Instead of assuming that something was soy free, the waitress checked the ingredients herself to discover an unsafe item. And, the food was amazing!
After lunch we made our way straight to the house (my home for the next 6 day) so I could settle in and meet the kitties.
Yellow Kitty – Duck
Serra (who, for the duration of my stay was referred to as Serra Kitty – I was referred to as Sara Hooman.)
Sweet Wesley
Beautiful Princess Buttercup
We made a trip out to Whole Foods later to get some stuff for dinner and ended up staying up way too late talking and playing games (it wasn’t until like 1am EST that I finally crawled into bed.) We had a pretty easy day on Friday, so it wasn’t a big deal that I didn’t get into bed early. Though, I think Barbara and Michael were pretty impressed at the fact that I was still going pretty strong after being awake for over 20 hours! lol
I’ll post about Friday’s trip into Boulder to visit Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins and tour the Schacht Spinning Wheel Factory.
Sarandipity's Craft Room 
You must be logged in to post a comment.