Holiday Travel Report

I chose to fly from Boston to Denver on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I expected heavy travel, and then heard on the news that the day before Thanksgiving is actually the heaviest travel day of the year. When I left my apartment for work at about 5:45 am, there were a few snow flakes swirling around. All the indicators for one of those memorable holiday travel days were present. I had a taxi pick me up at Novell's office in Waltham. There are 3 or 4 wild turkeys that live on the site of the large facility where Novell leases space. The natural competitors for the turkeys are gone, so they wander around pretty leisurely on the grounds. One of them move out pretty quickly, however, when I came walking along. When the taxi driver arrived with a frozen turkey in the back of her vehicle. There was hardly a cloud in the sky, and no snow storms had materialized. My flight was to depart at 4:53 pm, and I had the taxi driver pick me up at 1 pm. She informed me that in recent years the airport is very busy on Tuesday's, with less people traveling on Wednesday. I had actually used this same taxi driver twice before. She told me about her Thanksgiving plans. I believe she had given me a ride when I went to Argentina, so I told her a bit about my trip there back in August. We arrived at the airport at about 1:30 pm. No huge traffic jams, no huge crowds, no interminable lines, nothing. The fare was $61, so the total was $68 after a tip. Nothing really remarkable happened in the airport. I ate some clam chowder at Legal Sea Foods. I bought a frozen yogurt waffle cone, and then dripped chocolate frozen yogurt all over myself. On an unrelated note, I've recently found myself growing irritated at the incessant communications over the PA systems in airports. Maybe its just me . . . My flight to Denver was uneventful, except for when I spilled cran-apple juice all over myself. I also overheard someone tell a fellow traveler that while most people have "genetic trees," that in his family they have many half-brothers and half-sisters, so they have more of a "genetic garden" or "genetic bush." On the flight I began reading a novel set in Afghanistan that had been recommended by friends this past summer. The head flight attendant added some embellishments to the standard announcements. On arriving in Denver, he thanked everyone for choosing to fly United, and indicated that the families of the United employees also appreciated our choice, and that our choice was also appreciated by his parole officer. My mother and brother greeted me at the airport, and as we waited for my father to come through the passenger pickup loop, I stepped out to flag him down, only to be cautioned by an overzealous law enforcement officer - - "You can't load there!" So, I arrived in Denver without incident. No weather delays, no outrageous masses of humanity stranded indefinitely in airports, nothing. The best I can muster for this trip is spilling food all over myself twice and the Denver police officer. This was quite disappointing as I had been hoping for a memorable travel day. As I am sure is the case with most all of the vast readership of The Greg Jones Blog, I have actually had some memorable holiday travel days. A couple of years ago my brother Doug and I made the drive from Provo to Littleton to visit my parents for Christmas. As we exited the Eisenhower Tunnel that goes under the Continental Divide, it was dark, it was icy, snow was everywhere, and the I-70 quickly turned into a parking lot. Earlier in the evening boulders and rocks had fallen onto the freeway, and it was taking time to make the freeway safe again. Fortunately Doug and I had many supplies in the car. I believe we were stuck for about 2 hours there. During the course of the wait, from time to time a stranded passenger would have to run across westbound I-70 to get behind the tree lines and answer mother nature's call. Once the highway opened up we made it into Littleton without any problems. Several years earlier I arrived at the Denver airport for an evening flight to Salt Lake City. I had to report to work the next day after having spent the Christmas break in Colorado. I was taking TWA. There were no weather problems in Denver. But our TWA plane was tied up with weather conditions in St. Louis. I believe the flight departed after 1 am. I rode down to Provo with a bunch of BYU students I'd never met before. I think we got into Provo after 4 am. Working at Novell that day was a real grind. Why couldn't I have had one of those memorable holiday travel days?