Areas of Unrest

28 July 1999 - Rocky Mountain Low

Warning: this is another entry about the travails of business travel. On the plus side, that means it is not another entry about music you never heard of, Central Asian geography, or my love life.

First, the travel agent had screwed up majorly on the hotels. For Monday night in Colorado Springs, they had booked me at a hotel that a) was not one of the four choices I had listed and b) was considerably more than the per diem allowance ($105 a night vs. $73. I would still get reimbursed but it takes more paperwork and high level signatures.) I wouldn't have minded this so much, except that I figured it was worth seeing if I could avoid the hassle. And my first choice hotel was indeed available at the per diem.

And then for Tuesday night in Boulder, they had booked me at a Day's Inn out at I-25 and 119, allegedly in Longmont but actually in Kansas by any reasonable definition of the boundaries of Colorado. There was a scrawled note alleging that there was not a single hotel room available at any price in either Boulder or Louisville. My first choice hotel on my travel request was the Omni Interlocken, which is in Broomfield, approximately a tenth of an inch south of Louisville. I called them and was again able to reserve a room at the per diem. I should also note that after a number of bad experiences with that chain, my travel profile says to avoid Day's Inn.

Since I had a document to review and briefing charts to write before an 11 a.m. meeting, I was not exactly pleased with needing to spend time on the phone doing my own hotel reservations. If it were an isolated incident, I wouldn't mind half so much. But these are the same people who called me to ask me what airlines fly to Huntsville. The same people who told a hotel a smoking room was okay for a colleage who has "No smoking required due to asthma" on her profile. The same people who put my boss on a nonrefundable flight without telling him he would have to pay $75 to change the ticket. (The company would reimburse him, of course, but it is the hassle factor at work again.) I think that every single member of my department has now written at least one complaint letter to the corporate travel services people about our problems with the travel agency.

Still, I had managed to find acceptable hotels, so I was optimistic. The flight from LAX to Denver had a minor glitch as there was apparently some problem related to paperwork for a piece of cargo and they had to unpack the entire baggage hold to get some numbers off a box to do the weight balance correctly. Still, we made up the delay time caused by that, so I thought all was was fine. But then I saw that the flight down to Colorado Springs was delayed by a little over an hour. Fortunately, I was able to obtain a seat on the United Express flight that was just two minutes later than the original United flight. The major downside of this was that it took long enough that I didn't have time to get dinner at DIA. But, actually, it wasn't terrible in that the Express flights (which are operated by Air Wisconsin) are surprisingly decent. The seating was quite luxurious and the plane was less noisy than most turboprops I've been on in the past. And, most importantly, I got to Colorado Springs more or less on time.

Did you know that there are no restaurants anywhere near the Colorado Springs airport? Oh, sure, there is bad overpriced food in the airport, but I had to drive out to Academy Blvd. and, even then, about all that was open after 9 p.m. was fast food joints. Of course, part of the delay was sort of my fault in that Avis had given me a fancy schmancy Buick LeSabre and it took me almost half an hour to figure out how to adjust the seat. It's all electronic, but the control is labeled "tilt seat" so I kept trying to find a lever to move the seat forward. Only the presence of an owner's manual in the glove compartment (which took me a mere five minutes to figure out how to open) saved me from adding to my personal list of embarassing rental car stories. (I once had to call Avis because neither the friend I was with nor I could figure out how to remove the key from the ignition of a car we had rented. It turned out that there really was a button you had to press to release the lock, but it was quite well hidden. And then there was the time they actually managed to give me the the wrong keys for the car. The keys were in the ignition when I got the car, so I didn't discover this until the next morning when I spent 20 minutes fiddling before going in and calling. They told me "it's the key with the round head" and I could hear them shaking their heads when I said "but one key has a square head and the other has a triangular head." I left the keys at the hotel desk, got a lift with a colleage to the meeting I was attending, and sure enough when we returned to the hotel they had left me an entirely new car with functional keys. Finally, there was the matter of the shedding feather boa and the inquisitive rental car return guy, but that may not count since I wasn't the one who had rented the car.)

Incidentally, the Le Sabre did have one cool feature. The rear view mirror adjusts to headlights automatically. You can also set the air conditioning via a digital temperature display and have it modify the air flow automatically, but I found that to be less of a "gee whiz" thing for me.

All that is neither here nor there and I survived an evening of fast food and a really bad hotel breakfast and an only moderately tedious meeting. And I got to see my friend Marcia and have lunch with her at a very nice cafe called Marigold's (save room for dessert - the citrus cheesecake was marvelous) and I didn't even get lost getting to her house and none of the cats threw up on me so things were looking up.

And then I drove north and learned that the better part of two counties is under construction. And somewhere around Parker there is a Christian radio station whose signal drowns out the oldies station I was listening to.

Still, I found the Omni Interlocken (which is, itself, more or less in the middle of a construction zone), unpacked a bit, discovered I had spilled something on the dress I planned to wear today and would be forced to wear the same skirt and blouse I'd worn yesterday, and drove back through the construction zone and on to Boulder to eat dinner. The entire population of the Mountain Time Zone decided to go out to eat at the same time so there was a 90 minute wait at Zolo or a 60 minute wait at Full Moon Grill. Blue Plate Kitchen had closed and Serendipity had closed and I was afraid to drive downtown because there was a thunderstorm going on and I was sure I wouldn't be able to find a decent parking spot and what if everything there had closed? I finally decided to try Laudisio, where I was able to get a table on the (protected) patio. It had been quite a long time since I'd been there, so I had completely forgotten what I had tried there before. I settled on a special of grilled salmon with salsa verde.

Now I know that "salsa verde" could be interpreted to mean just about any green sauce if I just translate the Italian. But I had somehow expected it to be sort of pesto-ish. Or maybe something like olive oil with green herbs. I had not expected a bland mayonaisse textured emulsion that may have even had chunks of the dreaded avocado (one of the two foods I absolutely don't eat; bananas are the other). Truth in menus would have had them call this stuff "green goddess dressing" though I suppose nobody under the age of 35 knows what that is (and, trust me - you don't want to). Fortunately it was on the side and easy enough to avoid once I discovered that it wasn't edible and the salmon was quite tasty with just a bit of lemon on it. And there were really good grilled pea pods and a nice nutty-flavored orzo side dish. It wasn't a bad meal, but it was overpriced for what it was. If I could replay the evening, I'd have gone to dinner earlier so I could have eaten at one of my favorites. Or I'd have driven downtown.

Everything is always better in the morning, right? A nice breakfast at Le Peep (hint: you can order the skillet dishes without the basted eggs on top) was followed by a reasonably productive couple of meetings. And I had lots of time since my flight wasn't till 3:40 p.m. so I stopped by Rue Morgue and bought several mysteries. I decided to wait until I was at the airport before having a late lunch, since I'd had such a hearty breakfast. This proved to be a wise move but not for the reasons I had done it.

When I arrived at the airport, I saw that the 3:40 flight was not going to leave until 4:50, apparently due to a weather delay with the flight coming in. So I ate lunch, checked in for the flight and settled down with a novel. The time slowly drifted in 5 minute intervals and around 5 p.m. we were boarded. There was a long line for take-offs and our plane was tenth. Eventually, there was a Vanguard flight on the runway and we were next in line. I heard conflicting rumors about whether or not the Vanguard flight managed to take off, but there was no doubt about the gusty winds and heavy rain that hit. It was pretty obviously unsafe for anybody to do anything in; some people were whimpering in fright just feeling how much the plane rocked with each gust as we sat on the ground.

So we sat and sat for about two hours and the weather didn't get better. They announced that we would need to refuel as they hadn't anticipated this lengthy delay so we taxiied back to the terminal. The crew had been on for 14 hours so they were replaced. We couldn't refuel yet due to the lightning, so we sat and sat. The big debate was whether or not we could get off the plane. The crew (both old and new) were discouraging it, but there was essentially no air conditioning while we were powered down so it was amazingly hot inside. And a lot of people wanted to get food. (See, I said it was a good thing I'd eaten such a late lunch.) I settled for stretching my legs inside the plane and getting a glass of water but mostly just read my mystery (Twilight by Nancy Pickard, if you care). There were rumors of funnel clouds, but I didn't see any.

In the end, we took off about 8:15 and the flight itself was fine. What was most amazing was that there seemed to be remakably little grumbling. The fellow next to me was going to miss his connection to Honolulu, for example, but just shrugged at the prospect of getting there a day later. The way I figure it is, yeah, it's annoying, but I prefer arriving safely and there isn't much use in losing my temper over it. Usually, though, everyone else is screaming abuse at the crew. Even the woman behind me with the baby managed fairly well to keep it from howling through much of the flight.

So it may not have been the best trip, but all's well that ends well, as Shakespeare always said when he flew from Denver to Los Angeles.