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Whether your visit is a day or a month, the last day always had a bit of sadness about it. Home and sleeping in your own nest is always best, of course, but that does limit you and the experiences you may have. Anyway, this is Day 5 of 5 for this trip...
Thursday,
16 October, 2003 |
|
| 6:58am (MDT) | I again woke up just before the alarm, as did the boy... which was even more of a surprise given he didn't get to bed until about 3am, apparently. Good for him. |
| 7:02am | Someone from Tubby's work called to say he could keep sleeping, and they'd cover for what he's supposed to be teaching, given the lateness of staying up late last night, working. |
| 7:06am | Apparently going back to sleep wasn't going to work, so the lad and I packed up and headed to the lobby. |
| 7:12am | Tubby and I met up with Heather and Lisa from his work, and after some general planning, Tubby drove the three of us to the airport to drop Lisa off for her flight. |
| 8:14am | With a generally lax attitude, we finally made it to the airport, and dropped Lisa off. But, not before one of the traffic cops directed Tubby, twice, on how to park, although he was a bit vague about the whole process. |
| 8:45am | We managed to get back into Denver proper, and in our wanderings about, stumbled across the Wild Squirrel, part of an attraction at a local theme park (that is closed for the season). As pictures go, it could have been better, but what can you do? |
| 8:53am | From there, we headed into the downtown area, and tracked down Pepsi Center. (Mmmm, Pepsi.) They also had an odd little orb in the front, which I posed in front of, although I'm sort of teeny-tiny against the front of it. (Pretend it's a Where's Waldo thing -- find Frank in the picture...) |
| 9:02am | We were able to get in front of Coors Stadium, where they play that baseball game that you American types seem so very fond. |
| 9:16am | I also managed to bumped into the Union Station train station, which seemed to have a pro-transportation rally taking place. I don't quite get it, but it was a neat building. If you like cartoons, this place may look familiar. I'm not sure where the regular workers work, but the executives are taken care of. |
| 9:25am | I will confess not seeing the connection, but in front of the courthouse are two rams. What rams and justice have to do with one another, I don't know, but I'm not one to question the customs of other peoples. Mock those customs, certainly -- but not question. |
| 10:21am | We rather found this interesting. Do you pay more attention when driving, honk when turning the corner...? |
| 11:02am | Somewhere along the way, we ended up in Commerce City, a place that Heather tells me is known for its oil refineries. And sure as sure can be, we found several near and far. |
| 11:58am | We dropped Heather off at the United gate, and having waved bye-bye, headed back to the office to collect the rest of the gang and head out to lunch. |
| 12:27pm | We had lunch at Panera Bakery, a mile or so from the office. Everyone had sandwiches, and the boy bought a loaf of Asiago bread, which the Monterey girl introduced us to a month or two ago. Good stuff, that bread. And it only cost us $3.95. |
| 1:33pm | After lunch, we returned to the office to regroup with the others, load up the right people into the right cars with the right luggage, and headed off the 21 miles to the airport. |
| 1:48pm | Tubby navigated the car from the work office, with Kathy, Diane, and Debbi on board. Following two other cars, we eventually made it to the airport after stopping to feed the oddly hungry Mazda rental car that we ended up when Heather took off at noon. |
| 2:42pm | Our entire travel party (the gang) hit the Hertz lot to return the three rental cars, and take the bus over from the rental car place over to the airport terminal. Our bus was driven by Robert, an efficient albeit not overly friendly sort of chap. But I'm more keen of efficiency than I am friendliness... as anyone who's met me would likely attest. |
| 3:01pm | We reached the ticketing counter within the Denver International Airport, where it was found that our 5pm flight home is actually booked to a 7:50pm flight, but the guy put us on stand-by for the 5pm flight. Of course, by doing stand-by, we have to check our luggage is a different manner, and took is down from window 40-something to window 1. |
| 3:07pm | The folks at secondary luggage screening were quite helpful, took our bags and even suggested taking the back staircase to the security area. We arrived and found we were way ahead of the rest of the gang we were traveling with. |
| 3:18pm | I cleared security fine, although they did find one of those freebie Swiss Army-like knives in the boy's backpack. Funny thing though -- they didn't find it at the airport when we left home. |
| 4:29pm | Nothing new has happened in the last hour, I assure you. I'm just sitting here writing this, and everyone else is reading or wandering about. |
| 4:37pm | And during that wander I found that instead of gate B33, the 5pm flight we're hoping to leap upon, is departing from B37. We bundled up our collective crap and moved down, where we found the rest of the gang is waiting patiently. Of the seven, three are reading, two talking, one eating ice cream, and the last sort of looking on to the other six doing their particular thing. I, of course, am busy pecking away at the keyboard. |
| 5:11pm | Tubby talked to someone (yes, I too was impressed), and got us upgraded from a stand-by passenger to sitting in seat 24A. Hurrah! |
| 5:38pm | The plane finally pulled from the gate, and we were on our way to our final destination, a mere 2 hours and 30 minutes away. |
| 7:05pm | We touch down at home, and wander off to baggage claim. |
| 8:13pm | We're both home and alive and back in the nest. As we began to unpack, I discover there is a second pocketknife in Tubby's luggage... so, to summarize - when we left home, he had two, and neither were detected by the airport. On return, the larger of the two were found, but the smaller one was not. Riggggghhhht... |