Adventures in Jet-Setting

Perhaps "Jet-Setting" is an old word.  Way back when air travel by jet was just beginning to be popular there were some people who were rich who could afford to travel a lot.  There were no such things as "frequent flyer miles" or "discount travel web sites."  People who wanted to fly just went to the travel agent and bought tickets.  Those who were rich enough to take trips frequently, say, more than once per month, were called "the jet-set."  Anyway, with all that as background I will tell you about my recent trip to Western Washington.

I flew out of Minneapolis on the early (7am) flight on Tuesday, January 5th and, with a change of planes in Denver that included a stop long enough to buy breakfast, I got to Seattle by 11:30 in the morning.  By the time I got to the rental car agency and picked up the car I was on the road to Bellingham by noonish.  I was kind of excited about the rental car because they rented me a PT Cruiser, and I had been sort-of interested in purchasing one, but had heard bad things about the gas mileage and long-term reliability, so I was interested in trying one out for myself.  Anyway, my plan was to pick up Daniel at 3pm and have an afternoon of frolic followed by dinner at LaFiamma, Daniel's favorite pizza restaurant.  I would call the trip to the Pacific Northwest uneventful so far.  Things went very smoothly as a matter of fact.  I got to Bellingham early enough to get some lunch before I picked up Daniel, and got him on time at 3pm.

Daniel and I engaged in one of our favorite father-son winter activities, playing pool at Park Bowl.  He has improved noticeably since the last time we played, but I still managed to take two of the three games we played.  We also played air-hockey and, combining my air hockey victories in the wee hours of New Year's Day after ringing in the New Year, I can brag that I am currently undefeated in air-hockey in 2010.  Of course, I am writing this on the 10th of January and I have only played about 10 games so far on two separate occasions, but still, it sounds better to say I'm undefeated for the year, so there!  We had a good dinner and great conversation before heading to Bellis Fair Mall to see what has changed in the years since I have seen it, and I picked up a CD of Handel's Messiah to play in the PT Cruiser.  Ah, the trip from Bellingham to Federal Way was nice, with all that music in my ears.

I truly enjoyed staying with Jon and Karen while in the area.  They are great hosts.  I got to their house after 10pm and they didn't mind, and in the morning Jon even fixed me a big breakfast of eggs, sausage and some really good coffee.  As a treat they had raspberry jam.  I don't know why it is hard to find raspberry jam in Minnesota, maybe because it is hard to find raspberries in Minnesota, period.  So being able to have raspberry jam on my toast was even a treat.  At 9am I headed to Tacoma for my approval interview on the campus of Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland.  It was January 6th, 2010, the day of Epiphany on the church calendar, as an added bonus, or a good omen, or whatever, I saw a bald eagle landing in a fir tree as I was getting off of highway 512 and onto Pacific Avenue.

The approval interview was really nice.  The candidacy committee is full of warm and gracious people who are not only concerned about the welfare of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is their job, but they are also concerned with how I am doing personally.  They were very warm and welcoming, and the end result of the interview is that I am approved for ordination in the ELCA.  Now comes the assignment process, but that will be on a different blog entry.

After my approval interview and a nice lunch conversation with Paul, my pastor from Bremerton, I went back to Jon and Karen's for dinner.  When Jon learned that I had passed my approval interview with flying colors he suggested we go to dinner to celebrate, so we helped the local economy by eating at Azteca.  For evening entertainment we watched the new Star Trek movie.  I think I may have been the last one in our family to see it, but that has been cured.  Going to bed on Wednesday night was the last thing that went smoothly on the trip.

I got a call at 3am on Thursday morning from a computer of Southwest Airlines telling me that my flight had been canceled.  I was scheduled to fly from Seattle to Chicago and catch a connecting flight to Minneapolis, but there was a snow-storm in Chicago, so that ended that plan.  After giving up on the phone reservations after 7 minutes on hold, I figured I had better head to the airport and book a different flight.  First I had to turn in the rental car.  It has been a while since I drove from Federal Way to Sea-Tac airport in the dark, and somehow I managed to find myself on the wrong side of Pacific Highway and almost past the airport!  Luckily I had the good sense to recognize the airport lights that were on my right instead of my left, and got turned around before I drove too far.  I got the rental car turned in and headed to the airport.

At the airport I was naturally greeted with a VERY LONG line at the Southwest Airlines ticket counter, and a gentleman got up on a baggage scale to bellow out to the line, "In case you have not heard, Southwest flight 3511 with service to Chicago has been canceled.  If you need to go to Chicago I suggest you just go home and try again tomorrow, since this snow storm will keep the airport closed at least until noon."  I didn't go home.  I figured I don't need to go to Chicago, I need to go to Minneapolis, so when I got to the front of the ticket counter that is what I told the ticket agent.  She said to me that she could get me on a flight from Seattle to Denver and then from Denver to Minneapolis, but the soonest flight out was at noon, and I wouldn't get into Minneapolis until after 10 that night.  She was surprised that I said, "That will work!" right away.  She said to me, "Wow, I can't believe you're so agreeable!"  I said, "Well, YOU didn't make it snow in Chicago!"  She laughed and booked my flights.  The only downside is that all of this happened at about 5am, and the next flight to Denver was at noon!  That meant sitting in the airport for 7 hours!!  What do you do in an airport for 7 hours?  I slept a little, had breakfast, went to the Borders store in the airport and bought a magazine, a book and a newspaper, went to the nearby coffee stand and bought a large mocha, then went to the food court and sat down for a long wait. 

Maybe you are wondering what paper, magazine and book I bought.  The paper was the Seattle Times, naturally.  Even though I don't live in the area any more I still kind of like knowing what is going on.  The magazine was Country Living.  Why Country Living?  I like it because they talk about doing things that I like to do, like re-purposing an item from one thing to another, such as making a coffee table out of an old boat door, or making a cabinet out of an old console TV and stuff like that.

The book I bought was one that Jon had recommended the day before.  Mitch Albom has a new book out called, "Have a little faith" and Jon told me about how it talks about the commonality of faith among different religions uniting people rather than dividing them.  Reading that book sure helped make the day pass more easily.  It is one that I would also recommend.

I read the paper over my large mocha and my magazine after that, and both were long ago finished before I had to board my flight to Denver.  The book got started after I went to the gate to start boarding and I got a large chunk of it read between Seattle and Denver.  I called Anna to chat when I landed in Denver and updated her on the status of my flight to Minneapolis which had been delayed by half an hour and we chatted for quite a while, after all I had four hours to kill until my flight.  Even with all of the chatting I had time to grab some dinner at the Italian food stand in Denver and read some more Mitch.  The flight to Minneapolis was delayed just a little more, plus they had to change the boarding gate, but I finally got out of Denver at about 8:30 Mountain time. 

From Denver to Minneapolis I finished the book, got a nap, and calculated how much time I had spent in airports compared to how much time I had spent flying, and it is no comparison!  I was in airports for a total of eleven hours compared to four and a half hours of flying time.  I got home to our little apartment in St. Paul at about midnight Central time, thankful that this little adventure was finally over.  I hope the next time I have to fly it is in the spring, summer or fall.  Winter flying is too adventurous for me!  Blogged by Don