Reaon to be thankful

I do not really know exactly how I would like to start this post, so here it goes. I have lots of reasons to be grateful this Christmas.

1. I am grateful for Justin and Melissa. They picked me up from the airport at 2:30 am when they were not expecting me and then took me back to the airport the next night and didn't go home until they knew I was on a plane. They are great.

2. Mom and Dad. They were nice enough to pick me up from the airport after I finally made it into Anchorage.

3. Daniel S. This is the ticket agent who "cheated as much as he could" to put me as number 1 on the standby list for the flight to Anchorage instead of number 20. May you be blessed all you life.

4. The thought that I will not be as sad if I get stuck for longer on the way back to Colorado. It just doesn't seem like it will be quite as huge of a problem if I am stuck in Alaska as it would have been being stuck in Colorado.

5. It is Christmas. That means I get a break, I get to come home, I get to be with family and friends, and I have earned the name nit-nee. Thank you Mateo.


Now for the story. Yes like many of the holiday travelers out there I got stuck in the mess trying to get home for christmas. It began in Denver, where I was just a couple minutes to late to catch the early flight to Salt Lake. Had I been just 30 minutes earlier none of the madness would have happened. As it was however, I was not 30 minutes early and well that is where the story begins. I was sitting in the airport waiting for the flight to take off. I was really early so I was reading a really weird book. Then what to my wondering eyes should appear but a notice saying my 6:45 flight was delayed until 9:40. Not good news since my connection inSalt Late was supposed to take off at 8:50. So talking to the ticket agent she said she would put me on standby for the 5:05 flight that was for Salt Lake. Unknown to me she did not put me on standby, she just confirmed me on the flight. That would have been fine, until about 4:30 when the announcement came on the loudspeaker that they did not know where the plane was, that it had not landed in Salt Lake, and they were trying to find the plane. They did reassure us that they still thought they knen where the plane was, but that the flight for now was just delayed until 7:40. I was still okay and could still make the connection if all went well. Especially since the AK flight was delayed until 10.

Well life does not always work perfectly, and instead of ever finding the plane, they just canceled the flight. I thought I was still fine since I had a ticket on the 9:40 flight, but apparently the ticket agent who had put me on "stand-by" instead confirmed my seat, meaning that I had to be put on standby for my origional flight. I was very blessed to make it on that origional flight, and after another delay on the runway, we took off for Salt Lake, where I called my brother casue I had for sure missed my plane. Getting into SLC, I stood in line to talk to an agent about getting a flight to AK, but the agent kept on leaving. Finally tired, hungary, and yes, rather grumpy, I went to find my bag. During this whole time I had fun talking to Justin about when I was going to be in SLC. He of course was just laughing. Making my now moring better, I found out that I had to wait in another line to find my bag. Then another 35 minutes for them to go and get me my bag once alerted to the issues of me needing it. So at 2:30 am I went to Justins.

The next day I felt really good about putting myself on the now 20 person standby list. Justin now sure that I would be spending a couple more nights with them kept telling me that it was no use. But once I got to the airport a nice ticket agent listened as I told him what happened (except I couldn't remember which airport I had flown in from), and he did what he could to make me the most important person on the standby list. It worked, and after pacing in front of the screen that shows the standby list and the cleared list for what seemed like forever I was on. what a relief. It is amusing to see me on the standby list because it shows up PIE/B.

When we landed in AK, it was a relief to see mom. She was waiting. And then we got to wait for another hour for my luggage, so at 2:30 am we were home. Yeah. I love Christmas.

Thank you to everyone who helped me get home and I hope everyone out there had a very merry christmas.