On The Go To CO!

I have been going to Colorado since 2010 and so I have been to most of the tourist attractions (especially in Colorado Springs and Denver.) With that said I hadn’t been back to Colorado in 2 years - last year I went to Israel with my sister instead of visiting her in Colorado – so I thought I should make the trip out there again. Not only did she get a new dog that I have never seen, but also a new boyfriend so I thought I should check both of them out (more so the dog because I love dogs.)

As my flight was very early and I would have to leave my house at 2 am to get to the airport on-time I had to bring my dog to the kennel the day before. It is his second time staying at the kennel and I think he likes it there – especially since he can hang out and play with other dogs – but it still wasn’t easy to bring him there, but I did.

The next day I drove to the airport (very early as I already said) and had to deal with some dense fog along the way. I parked in the airport garage and walked to the terminal. Even though the airlines say to be there 2 hours beforehand for domestic flights Southwest Airlines – which I was flying – wasn’t open 2 hours before. On top of them being tardy they have a new (and I think – dumb) system where you have to do everything yourself including printing your luggage tag only to then being it to the bag drop where a Southwest employee checks your ID. There was a woman with five children on the kiosk next to me and she asked the Southwest employee who was walking around the different kiosks for help and the female employee simply told the woman to “follow the directions” and then walked away. This is the kind of arrogance that Southwest tends to have especially when dealing with their customers. I managed to do what Southwest should have done and then headed for the TSA line. I was told (by the TSA woman checking my ID and boarding pass) that I was their first passenger that day – I guess I should have felt honored, but I could have cared less. I walked through the full body scanner and then had the TSA guy pat my bare arms (I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.) That only seems to happen to me at this one particular airport – maybe the TSA there just likes my arms and want to touch them. It can’t be because they saw something in the scanner.

After going through security I found my gate and when it was time to board I boarded among the first people and sat by the window. The flight crew announced it wasn’t a full flight and so there was a seat in-between me and a woman. I have to comment on the woman. She looked like she had just walked out of a 1980s movie. Her hair was about 5 times larger than her head and the shoulder pads in her business suit seemed just as high. It was pretty funny to see. Other than that the flight to Baltimore was uneventful.

At BWI I had to walk the long trek from Concourse A to Concourse C, but I had a long layover and so didn’t have to rush. When it was time to board I boarded among the first people (again) and this time the flight crew announced that it was a full flight. The two other people in my row had to use seat-belt extensions (as did four other people nearby.) The guy right next to me was wearing shorts and he wouldn’t stay on his side and I noticed when I was leaving the plane that he had left a sweat stain on my pants – just the side he touched. It was not very pleasant. Throughout the flight to Denver the pilot and his crew were going crazy about turbulence and they kept the seat-belt sign on most of the 4 hour flight – even though there was no turbulence to speak of. The over-reaction and melodrama by the pilot and his crew did not go unnoticed by the other passengers –not just me. These are the people who are supposed to be in control of things and here they were “experiencing” turbulence that no one else on-board the same plane was feeling.

I was glad to get off the plane as soon as we landed in Denver. Of course I had to take the dumb train to the main terminal where I met my sister and got my bag and headed to Colorado Springs. While the flights to Colorado weren’t the worst ones I have every experienced they did have their odd parts.