Chapter 1: “Russians Don’t Take A Dump, Son, Without A Plan.”
We had a plan. It was a good plan.
Ok, it was a decent plan.
It was the best we could come up with. We were flying from Philadelphia to Denver really early in the morning. Scheduled departure time was 7:10 a.m. And we had a 17-month-old toddler with us who would be sitting on our laps for the duration of the 4-hour flight. What could possibly go wrong?
That’s a great plan, Mark. That’s bleepin’ ingenious, if I understand it correctly. It’s a Swiss bleepin’ watch.
Why were we doing this to ourselves? Well, we take a vacation every year. It’s the biggest annual event we look forward to as a family, and we really enjoy seeing the country. We’re trying to get to all 50 states as a family—not because it means anything in particular, but more as a way to try and experience all of the diverse wonders and attractions that the country has to offer. We’d try and see other countries as well, but—well, you try paying for overseas travel for a family of six.
At the beginning of this trip, the elder three kids had been to 28 states. Baby Drew, in his year-and-a-half of existence, had already knocked out 14. We made the decision to try and do a longer, more expensive flight on this vacation while he was still young enough to ride on our laps. In other words, so I’d only have to pay for 5 tickets instead of 6.
So the plan was this: wake up at the butt crack of dawn, or 4:00 a.m. Be on the road by 4:30 a.m. Keep the baby awake in the car. Get dropped off at the airport by 5:15 or so. Check in our bags (thank you for no bag fees, Southwest!) and do the TSA Tango. Eat breakfast at the gate. Take off at 7:10, and hope the baby is so tired he falls asleep during the flight so we don’t become THAT FAMILY WITH THE ANNOYING BABY on the plane. We were scheduled to land in Denver at 9:20 a.m. local time, which would give us plenty of time to get our rental van and head downtown for a noon tour of
Coors Field, where the Colorado Rockies play baseball. David is our biggest baseball fan and would no doubt enjoy seeing the stadium.
Sounds reasonable, right?
The Oblivious Family Law of Airports states that no matter where you enter the terminal, our airline check-in desk will always be at the opposite end of the building. This held true and we lugged our bags all the way down the length of the building. The Second Law of Airports states that our gate will always be the very last one at the end of the row. Again, this law held firm. But in spite of those unavoidable natural occurrences, amazingly, everything went according to plan. By 6:20 a.m., we were seated at the gate and eating overpriced McMuffins from the airport McDonald’s. Baby Drew did his part by refusing his baby food and trying to steal our hash browns.
Soon they were boarding the plane. We decided to take one row of 3 seats with me, Julie, and Sarah together so nobody would get annoyed with the baby crawling all over the place. Scotty and David were across the way in another row. Pity the poor guy who would end up in the extra seat there. In short, everything went swimmingly and by 7:10 we were ready to push back from the gate.
We didn’t push back from the gate.
Around 7:25, the captain’s voice came over the intercom to tell us there had been a mixup and the plane had taken on too much fuel. So they had to have the truck come over to pump some fuel out before we could depart. We settled into our seats to wait for them to finish.
Ten minutes later, the captain informed us that the fuel truck was servicing another plane, but that we were next on the list.
At 7:40, the fuel truck finally showed up. It took several minutes for them to do their work. Then they packed up, and at last we were ready to go.
Then the captain told us that we had to wait to sign the new paperwork for the fuel that had been pumped out. Baby Drew pushed away from Julie and crawled over onto my lap.
At 7:55, we finally pushed back from the gate. Baby Drew was busy screwing up the settings on my iPad. By 8:00, we were taxiing to the runway. Then we stopped.
The captain informed us that we were 12th in line to take off. So it would be another 20 minutes or so. Meanwhile, Baby Drew fell asleep on my lap.
We sat and sat with no movement. I began to worry—not only would we be late for the baseball stadium tour, but now we were wasting prime baby sleeping time! I’d been hoping we wouldn’t have to spend all 4 hours of the flight entertaining a restless toddler.
Time passed at a glacial pace. I told Julie I couldn’t wait for the captain to come back on the air to announce, “Well, folks, I’m sorry, but we’ve burned up so much fuel sitting here on the runway that we now need to fill the tanks back up…”
Finally, around 8:25 a.m., we took off for Denver. The baby was still asleep, so I could enjoy my rare time in the window seat (usually the kids take it) and take in the view of our great nation from above.
Sigh.
About 30 minutes into the flight, Baby Drew woke up. So our plan had worked! We only had to entertain him for 3 and a half hours.
Any parent knows that toddlers have the same attention span as a housefly that took a sip from an espresso. So Julie had packed her carry-on bag with all sorts of little toys, gizmos, snacks, and anything else she could think of. The idea was to keep finding things that would entertain him for the next 15 minutes. For the most part, it worked. Every once in a while, he would get tired of being cooped up on our laps and fuss a bit. At one point, I got up and walked the aisle with him just to change the scenery. And I still have no idea how he changed the background screen on my iPad. But all in all, we survived the flight, and we landed in Denver around 10:30 a.m. It’s been several years since I was in Denver, and I’d forgotten how exciting it feels the first time the Rocky Mountains become visible.
The Oblivious Family Law of Airports held again, and we retrieved our 72 bags from the carousel only to find that we once again had to lug them all the length of the airport in order to get to the rental car shuttle. Julie and I looked at the time and quietly agreed that the delay in Philadelphia had killed us—there was no way we were going to make it to the baseball stadium in time for the tour. Not only did we still need to get the rental, but the Denver airport is located only slightly closer to Denver than the Philadelphia airport. Seriously, you can’t even see the city from the airport. So it would take a little while to get into town. We’d have to go to Plan B. What was Plan B, you ask?
Ok, we’d have to come up with a Plan B.
Thankfully, they didn’t deem us “unacceptable” and allowed us to leave the airport. We made it to the rental lot and picked up a Toyota Sienna. Once again, my Costco membership had come through for me and I’d gotten a really good deal for two weeks in the minivan. The clerk even remarked on the price I’d obtained. If only he knew how much we were going to abuse that poor vehicle.
We were on the road heading west on I-70 by about 11:30 or so. No sooner could we see the city skyline than we hit a traffic jam heading into the city. I had never read anything about Denver traffic before, but we found it to be surprisingly crappy most of the time on the highways. Rarely did we not encounter some sort of backup in our time there.
We were all getting hungry, so I bailed off the freeway and headed downtown. I’d seen a place called the
Denver Biscuit Company on a TV show somewhere, and thought that sounded like a cool place to eat. So we entered it into the GPS and…nothing. Apparently, the place didn’t exist.
Around that time, Julie spotted a sign for a Chick Fil-A downtown, and we decided that would work just fine. The place was on Colfax Ave., just east of downtown Denver. We pulled into the parking lot, which was packed. I let Julie out to go place a takeout order and circled the lot until I found a space. We figured we’d just eat in the van.
A while later, Julie returned with our lunch. We hadn’t eaten since 6:20 a.m. Eastern time and were starving. Sarah grabbed her cup of Cherry Coke and shoved her straw through the lid…and also straight through the bottom of the cup. Within seconds, she was sitting in a puddle of Cherry Coke, in the rental van we’d barely had for an hour. And she was wearing white shorts.
Julie ran back in and got another soda for her while we cleaned things off as best we could. All of our clothes were still packed away, so poor Sarah had to sit for a little while on top of a stack of napkins in wet shorts. But in the end, we had our lunch and could finally do a little sightseeing. In fact, one of the first sights we saw as we headed west on Colfax Ave. was the Denver Biscuit Company, just a few blocks down.
Well, now we know where it is the next time we visit.
Coming Up Next: Plan B! And another rewarding trip through a crappy tourist trap gift shop.
Tambu lounge will out your drinks in plastic cups. If not at Trader Sams then the Tambu has been better than the pool bar.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Good luck.
Everything was sounding great until the whole "trapped in the mountains" part.
