new york, new york, pt. 2

yesterday was my travel day to new york. i had no idea that was exactly what it was going to be: an entire day of travel.

i woke up not really ready to go to new york. i wanted to enjoy my sunday morning. i had my coffee. i goofed out with demitria. i petted sofie. it was the typical awesome, relaxing great sunday morning. but i momentarily forgot how to tell time and if it wasn't for demitria, i would have been super late to my flight. i was nowhere near ready to go when we realized we should have left ten minutes ago. i grabbed my bag, grabbed my computer and we started to drive to the airport. but when i was driving, i was going through my mental list of things i was going to need in nyc. there was something missing from that list. my phone. we had to head back to the house because i forgot my phone. i knew that had sealed my fate. i was certain i was going to miss my flight.

but i didn't. i got to the airport and went to print my ticket but the system could not find me. it kept saying there was an error. i didn't have time for errors. the line to get to the service desk was a mile long. but i was allowed to jump to a shorter line to find out what was happening. apparently my reservation was deleted. i have no idea why or how. i was certain at this point i was going to miss my plane.

but i didn't. i went through security, got to the gate and found out my flight was running 45 minutes late. ha! i hadn't missed my flight. i was going to make it. i got something to eat and got on the plane. i was ready to head to new york. this was 1 o'clock mountain time. we didn't leave the denver airport until close to 3:30 mountain time.

why? storms in new york. so the decision was made to take another route, hitting up atlanta and coming up the east coast. fine. that sounds good. but we had to add fuel because the flight was now going to be an hour longer because of this new route. so we had to get people off the plane. they asked for volunteers. people got off. they also took off all the luggage. this didn't affect me because i didn't check a bag. but the people around me, they were mad. and i had no way of getting away from them. the woman next to me went through every scenario possible of how she and her cousin (on a separate flight) were going to get to germany. time and again i heard the same concerns, the same answers and the same desperation and aggravation. i put in my headphones. and she still would say things outloud and look around as if she was talking in on particular direction in the hopes that someone, somewhere would participate in this unhappiness.

but we did make it into the air. the flight was pretty smooth except getting out of denver, but that's par for the course. we landed safely in new york at about 9:30 eastern time. i didn't get off the plane until close to 11p.m.

why? because the storms and lightening had gotten so bad that they shut down the outbound planes and we had no gate to park at. so we sat. and sat. and i heard people complain. and moan. the only highlight was the older woman next to me, probably in her late sixties. she was nice and i spoke to her a few times during the flight. i asked her how far we were from the city and she said about an hour. by this time, i was starving because there was no real food on the plane and i had anticipated having an awesome new york meal, but that wasn't going to happen. she gave me some packaged breadsticks and a peanut butter brownie because i was so hungry. i thanked her about ten times. she was the highlight of my day.

so we finally got off the plane. i got into a cab and headed for the city. it was huge. there were buildings everywhere. we drove by times square and it was the brightest and grossest thing i had ever seen. the hotel was very close to times square so once i checked in i was going to head out and take some light night pictures. i went to check in. they couldn't find my reservation.

why? i was at the wrong hotel. i had given the cabbie the wrong information because i looked it up in a fit on the plane because i couldn't find the email that gave the hotel's address. so i went back out and grabbed another cab and headed to the right hotel.

it was 12:30a.m. eastern time when i got to the right hotel.

i arrived at the airport in denver at 11 a.m. mountain time. i went to bed shortly after 1a.m. eastern time.

it was, without a doubt, the craziest travel day i've ever experienced in my life.

more to come from nyc.