Denver

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Scotland 5: Prelude 2

02.29.16 | 17:50 (Mountain Time) | Denver > Reykjavik

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The plane got to the gate about an hour and a half before our scheduled departure. I’m amazed at the number of passengers who stood up to wait in line, even though we had plenty of time before the flight crew was going to let us board the plane. Even with assigned seating, I guess they were as excited as I was.

As I boarded, I handed the flight attendant one of the boxes of chocolates that I’d brought with me. His reaction was not what I was expecting. He sarcastically rolled his eyes and said, “Just what I need, more sugar!” I should have taken it back, but I just smiled and told him that I wouldn’t force him to eat any and that it’s for the entire flight crew. A simple Thank you would have worked.

I managed to get an exit row seat. Today I’m traveling in style- economy class style. The guy sitting next to me, whose name I don’t remember, has been coughing nonstop since we were pushed back from the gate in Denver. He has finally fallen asleep, which is what I was hoping would happen. Nice fellow, though- he told me he was from just west of London and is headed home after a ski vacation in Colorado. I guess his cough is a souvenir he’s taking home from the U.S.

img_5487When one of the gals in the seat behind me was sitting down, I spied her Southwest Airlines crew badge. I told her I had one of those in my carry on bag. Small world! She is Las Vegas based and is heading to Iceland for about four days with one of her friends. After that, they plan on flying to Maine and going skiing.

08:21 | Reykjavik > Glasgow

The sun is now rising. Today is going to be awesome! We just had about an hour-and-a-half on the ground in Reykjavik. The airport seems to be a throwback to the 1970s. You know that wood paneling that so many houses had? Picture that, only a lot more of it. The flight was delayed leaving the airport because they had to bus all of us passengers out to a tarmac. Finally, we were able to de-ice and we are now on our way.

Unlike the first flight crew, this crew was very appreciative for the chocolates. The lady thanked me and a few minutes later, upgraded my seat to an exit row aisle seat that was much roomier. I don’t bring chocolate so that they’ll upgrade me, but if it happens, then that’s what I call a win-win!

I sat next to a girl named Brianna. She is from Denver and is coming to Scotland for the very first time to meet her online boyfriend face to face (eek!). I was nervous for her. She showed me his picture and he surely doesn’t look like a rapist or a serial killer. I guess many rapists and serial killers don’t look that way either. Before we parted ways, I gave her my card so that she can get ahold of me if needed. Maybe I’ll be part of the rescue operation.

A few minutes later, I saw her in the airport, close to tears, because she was unable to withdraw any money from the ATM. I asked if I could help at all, but she said no. I reminded here that she had my phone number, and also gave her my email address, just in case.

Back to the beginning of Scotland 5 | Forward to Scotland 5: Day 1

/ Dav / 54 Comments

Scotland 5: Prelude

02.29.16 | 13:14 | Denver International Airport

This is the quote that one of my roommates jotted down on the dry-erase board in the bathroom at our crashpad. How inspiring is that? I googled it and found the quote on several websites, but can’t find the person who is responsible. Maybe it’s by Anonymous… Anonymous sure comes up with some beautiful quotes!

Just over two months ago, in preparation for this vacation, I checked to see how many seats were available on the Iceland Air flights from the east coast United States to Glasgow, Scotland. I could see that there were some empty seats still, but also a chance that I may not get on the flight. I’m very thankful for the job perk of flying very cheap, if not free, but I’m never guaranteed a seat when flying space-available. Non-revenue flying means that you never know whether or not you’re going to get to your destination in time. Just like the domestic rules, a fully booked flight means that I could get bumped for a paying passenger. Unlike the states, however, being bumped on an international flight means that I could possibly end up stuck in a foreign country. I guess it wouldn’t be the end of the world if this happened. I am all about the adventure, after all.

I decided that I would take a bit of the stress out of this trip by booking my one-way flight, just like a normal passenger. Kayak.com found me the fare from Denver International Airport to Keflavik International Airport in Iceland, then on then to Glasgow for only $388 after tax! I figured this was a decent deal, so I booked it. At least the beginning of the trip shouldn’t be too stressful. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find an empty seat on my return flight home, when the time comes. Perhaps I’ll just stay in Scotland forever and start a new life. I hope British Airways is hiring.

I have been counting down to this day for over awhile now, which means that there has been plenty of sleepless nights. I’m like a kid. I get so excited and I start to overthink things and am constantly wondering if I remembered everything I’m going to possibly need while I’m there. I guess Scotland isn’t a third-world country- they have plenty of stores if I need to pick something up. What is the United Kingdom equivalent to Walmart? Primark? I think Asda is owned by Walmart. I’m sure I’ll need to make some visits there before too long.

Finally, the long-awaited day has come! I’ve been at the airport now for a few hours already. Dawn asked me last night what time I wanted to go to the airport. I told her I wanted to leave at about 03:00, even though my flight doesn’t take off until 16:15. It’s just that I’ve been planning this trip for so many months, leaving the crashpad would feel to me like it’s really happening. She looked at me and rolled her eyes… there may have been some colorful language that came out next. She didn’t want to wake up and drive me to the airport that early. Even though my body woke up at about 04:15, I made myself lay in bed until 05:00. I am a strong person who has total control over himself. Yeah, right.

One of my roommates had to be to the airport at about 10:30, so I dropped her off, parked the car in the employee lot, and had to hang out near the Icelandair ticket counter since nobody was even scheduled to be there until about noon. Finally, she got to the counter so I could check my big backpack. After that, I headed to the inflight lounge for a few minutes, found some lunch, bought some chocolate for the customer service counter and the flight attendants, and now I’m hunkered down in the terminal, waiting for my phone to finish charging. It’s currently at 86%.

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Here we go!

Forward to Scotland 5: Prelude 2

I’m a little bit country. So is she.

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At a very young age, my friend LaDawn and I would stand in front of the fireplace gripping a curling iron or a hairbrush, and we would pretend to sing A Little Bit Country – A Little Bit Rock ‘n Roll by Donny and Marie Osmond. The plan was to learn it well enough to perform it in the lip sync competition at the Graham County Fair. For whatever reason, we never made it to the fair, nor were they ever discovered that we were the next great duet. Go figure.

Marie Osmond came through my tiny, insignificant town on one of her concert tours when I was still in high school. I remember attending the concert with my buddy Josh Jones. I thought Josh and I were the coolest people in the audience because we both wore our boots, wranglers, button-up shirts, and our 50-gallon cowboy hats. I was right- we were cool!

After Marie sang a few songs, she asked the audience, “Anybody want to hear some country music?” We all threw our hands together and shouted- what can I say, Thatcher, Arizona has many country music lovers! Then she turned toward Josh and me and winked. Be still, my heart! I knew she was winking at us because we were the only two guys in that section of the Eastern Arizona College Fine Arts Center who happened to be wearing cowboy hats.

Jump forward to 2010 when I was in the process of coming up with my very cool bucket list. I knew what I needed to do: Number 63 on that list is to meet Marie Osmond. Jump forward again to today when she happened to board the flight I was working from Philadelphia to Denver. I didn’t recognize her during boarding but did once we were in the air. I needed to say hello and actually meet her, but she went right to sleep! For most of the flight, and hoped that she was awake, but nope. I wanted to “accidentally” bump into her, apologize, and then casually explain that I’ve needed to meet her for years and years. This stalker wasn’t getting his break.

FINALLY-at the end of the flight, when she was about to grab her bags and leave, I approached her, smiled, and told her I needed to tell her a quick story. She smiled and said sure. I basically told her everything that you just read above- I even pulled up this very blog to show her that meeting her was literally one of the items on my bucket list. I asked her for a picture, and she was so sweet and polite and posed with the crew. Then… I kid you not… she said, “If I’m on your bucket list, then we need to make this worth it!” She grabbed my left hand and pulled it around her waist. She threw her own right hand up to my shoulder and gave me a hug. We took another picture.

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The hotel shuttle dropped us off at Boston’s Logan International Airport at about 0730.

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Our flight was scheduled to leave at 0815. After the passengers boarded and we were ready for pushback, our captain got on the P.A. to inform us that some kind of indicator light was broken. This meant that we’d have to call contract maintenance over to take a look. We all crossed our fingers that it would be a simple fix. As it turned out, it wasn’t an easy fix at all.

About half an hour later, the mechanic informed us that the plane would be out of commission until he could get the necessary part flown in from Dallas to fix the problem. We now had to deplane all the passengers and wait for another plane to be available. It took about 3 hours to get the needed part from Baltimore, rather than Dallas, and another 2 hours to be fixed. It ended up being about a 6-hour delay when we boarded the same plane, pushed back from the gate, de-iced, and flew a close-to-five-hour flight to Denver.

I’m thankful for the fact that this is an A.M. trip. If this had happened later in the day, we would have been stuck an extra night in Boston, and my work’s scheduling department would have had to pull my next trip, and I’m really looking forward to that one. I’m also thankful that all of the passengers were extremely nice to us other than one rude man. Sometimes passengers tend to blame us for things out of our control since they need to blame somebody present.

Every other passenger understood that this wasn’t our fault and that we had places we needed to be just like them. The rude man I’m referring to came to the front galley, just before we were getting ready to leave and told me (in a very grumpy tone) that he was agitated because not only was it his wife’s birthday, but they were going to be late for their dinner reservations in Denver. I wanted to say something very sarcastic to him but held my tongue. All I could do was apologize for something that was 100% out of our control.

I’m happy to be lying in bed at the crashpad and am about to drift off to sleep. Even though I only had to work one leg, that long wait this morning has caused me to be extremely exhausted. Tomorrow I’ll rest and get ready to fly again on Monday.

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I’d like to give a shoutout to my new friend D’Lene, whom I met on my commute flight from Salt Lake City to Denver this morning. She was incredibly nice and even though she told me she was shy, we had a good and long chat about everything from hiking to online dating to driving the Alaska Highway (an item on my bucket list). Our entire conversation was so inspiring. Consequently, she reminded me a lot of my cousin Cathy, whom I haven’t seen in quite a few years. D’Lene was in northern Utah visiting some family but works as a psychology professor at a community college in the state of Washington. Wouldn’t you know, the most affordable way for her to fly from Utah back to Washington was to connect through Denver.

At the moment I’m sitting in the inflight crew lounge at Denver International Airport, waiting for my first plane to arrive. Even though I hate working these PM shifts, it was sure nice to spend one extra night at home. That usually makes it all worth it. I guess I should reserve my judgment until I meet and work with my crew. My coworkers can make or break a trip.