May 21, 2022
I woke up at 5:30am, my usual Mountain Time wake up time so, maybe, my body clock is back on schedule. Rather than go back to sleep I got up and did yesterday's blog entry. It's been busy snowing overnight.
Once the blog post was published I put on my workout out clothes, which had gone unused in Italy, and headed down to the fitness room. I logged some time on an elliptical machine.
I swim laps pretty regularly at Rocky Mountain College's pool which is 25 yards. This felt a little over half that length and adequate for the purpose. I didn't bring my swim goggles but navigated end to end by counting my strokes and trying to see the light at the end wall. After a while, the chlorine started getting to my eyes so I switched from freestyle to the backstroke. I rounded out the session with a bit of time in the hot tub.
I showered and dressed before grabbing some food in the restaurant. I'd texted Morgan to let her know what I was up to and later found that she took advantage of our downtime to catch up on sleep. In the meantime I had a message on FB from a friend in Denver who saw that we were spending time here. Kathy and I have known each other since early elementary school but hadn't seen each other in 31 years when I moved to Montana. She and her family moved to Denver a few years after that. She came over to the hotel and we had fun caching up. Morgan joined us and we went to lunch at the gyros place next to the hotel after which Kathy gave us a ride to airport. Morgan snapped a photo of us.
When we got to airport, Morgan and I went our separate ways as I have TSA-Pre and had to go to one end of the security complex and she was directed to the other. Going through was no problem except when I asked for my film to be hand checked. There was a pile up as our bags were scanned and when I got my film back, the end of one of the 35mm canisters had popped off. I guess that roll will be no good. We'll see when I develop it.
I headed for the train and rode it to B terminal and walked to Gate 48. Right when I got there I received a notification on my phone that we'd been changed to B20-something so I walked to the other end of the terminal. I found Isabelle there and we waited until Morgan found us. We chatted a bit and then headed to the lounge upstairs in the center of the terminal for some drinks to kill the time.
We got more notifications. Our gate changed again and the flight was delayed a couple of times. We got to the gate and waited there where we heard that the delay was due to waiting for a flight attendant. Eventually they started the boarding process.
Morgan's group went ahead of Isabelle and I and the two us ended up near the end of the line. When we got to where they scan the boarding passes, Isabelle presented the paper one she'd received when she had rebooked back in Europe. The scanner rejected it. She tried again. Still rejected. The attendant scanned through the passenger list on the computer and Isabelle wasn't there and was told to step aside.
Before I could react, the attendant reached over and scanned the pass I was holding on my phone and told me to board. I said "what about her?" and she said "we'll get her on the plane." I boarded, got seated and texted Morgan as to what was going on. Everyone got seated, overhead compartments were closed, and it looked like they were closing the door to the plane and Isabelle still had not shown up. What can only be described as "the last second" she shows up and gets escorted down the aisle to the seat which the boarding pass had assigned to her but was already occupied so they dropped her in another empty one. After the flight, Isabelle said they were going to send her back to customer service which would mean that she'd miss the flight but somehow managed to get herself on the plane.
The flight was uneventful and we landed without incident, glad to be back in Billings after what seemed like a very long transit.
I figure that I have one more blog post to write to finish up this saga where I will offer some observations and some musing about the experience. Stay tuned for that.
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