Day 4, Why I Really, Seriously, Completely Hate Denver: Getting in Touch with Our Emotions

Sure enough, Robbie was awake at 4 a.m. and my eyes popped open like I was five years old on Christmas morning. We’re getting out of this hellhole, I thought to myself.

We both showered and we were waiting for the airport shuttle by 5 a.m. We had to forgo breakfast, but I was getting a little tired of the buffets anyway, plus I figured there would be plenty of time to eat at the airport’s popular Panda Express.

Once we got to the main terminal of the airport, we saw a number of lines snaking around the various United counters. After further investigation, it appeared that all the snaking was really just two lines. I stood in the shorter of the two while Robbie went to verify where we should stand. Sure enough, a few minutes later he returned to inform me that we needed to be in the other line. The really long line.

It didn’t take as long as I expected. We had our tickets about an hour later, plus standby passes for the 10 a.m. flight. If we didn’t get on that flight, then there was one more Bozeman flight at 1. If we missed that second Bozeman flight, then we would hop on our United flight to Salt Lake, switch to Delta and be in Big Sky by dinner time.

We walked downstairs to stand in the security line. It seemed long, but I had no idea how long until we had walked for 15 minutes and still hadn’t reached the end. Robbie and I were laughing hysterically (because our flight wasn’t taking off for 9 hours) and I asked a woman if we were getting close.

“Not even,” she said, and then something like, “keep going and then keep going some more!”

As we kept walking, another line materialized, so that there seemed to be a line going around the inside of the terminal and one circling the outer edge. We finally reached an airport employee who held up a big sign that read: “This is the end of the line.”

It actually moved pretty quickly, especially since we struck up a conversation with the people behind us. People-watching was also amazing. I saw one girl crying her eyes out and yelling into her cell phone: “I should have gotten here at 3 this morning....How was I supposed to know?”

We continued to move forward but 45 minutes later, we were still standing in line with no metal detectors in sight. Still, what could go wrong? You stand in line long enough and you’ll reach your destination. Right?

But at one point, the inner line and the outer line appeared to converge.

“Oh God, what do we do?” the four of us wondered. There was another man with a “this is the end of the line sign” so we asked him where we should go. Basically, the two lines converged into this huge cluster and then on the other side of the cluster, two clear lines remained. The man told us to stay in the outside line, so we did, but a lot of the people we had been standing in line with were in the inside line now.

We waited for a few minutes more, but Rob was dubious about our line choice, so he saddled me with his tiny, but back-breaking carry-on (what the hell did he pack in that thing?) and went to check things out. He was gone for a while.

“I think my brother might have found the front and left me,” I told our new friends.

“Could you blame him?” They wondered.

After a while Robbie returned with a familiar expression: red-faced anger. We were in the wrong line. The outer line apparently circled around the terminal in one big circle and never got to a security checkpoint. People were fruitlessly standing in the line to nowhere.

Rob left again to go ask someone what we should do. He called me a few minutes later to say that he had laid down the law….with the law. He had yelled at some police officers about our predicament. The man who had misguided us was standing nearby and Robbie began telling the cops how he had sent us into the wrong line. The man responded by despondently removing his orange vest. Then the cops passed the buck.

“Well his supervisor is right over there,” the policemen told Robbie. The supervisor actually helped us a bit. He told Robbie that another security checkpoint was opening up in 30 minutes at the A concourse upstairs.

Rob headed up to the gate and instructed me over the phone to meet him there. The most frustrating conversation in the history of sibling conversations ensued.

“Go towards the atrium!”
“Is that near the United desk we stood by this morning?”
“What United desk? No, it’s by the Post Office. Go North.”
“How the hell do I know which way north is? Is it by the first line we stood in?”
“What line? No! You are in the wrong place!”
….and so on. For about 10 minutes. It was painful, but I found him and thirty minutes later we were waiting at the gate to fly standby to Bozeman.

Flying standby is a really interesting process. I always had this naïve misconception that it’s first come first served. In fact, it’s the result of some intricate equation involving premier status and how much a passenger paid for his or her ticket. Neither Rob nor I are premier members and our tickets were free, because our mother used frequent flyer miles. I didn’t realize these details while Robbie and I sat hopefully waiting for our names to be called for the standby list on the first flight.

A lot of names were called. None of them ours. I felt like I’d just been cut from the junior varsity basket-weaving team. It was awful.

We walked over to the gate of the next Bozeman flight with some other people. We talked to the gate agent to make sure we were on the standby list and she told us: “this flight is very oversold.” She must have told the girl behind us in line the same thing, because a moment later she joined the cry-your-eyes-out crew. She was inconsolable. That flight left an hour later. We weren’t on it and neither was she.

Over the course of the morning, Robbie and I had been monitoring the flights to Salt Lake. It appeared that they were all delayed. At that time, the flight we were on was running about 20 minutes behind schedule and we only had a 35-minute layover.

I decided that the best idea would be to check in for the second flight so that if we were late, they wouldn’t give our seats away. We hopped on the train to go to the Delta concourse and started walking towards the desk. On our way, we checked out the departures screen. Our flight to Salt Lake was getting later and later.

We walked up to a little blond cherub of a lady and told her that we needed our boarding passes from Salt Lake to Bozeman.

“Nope. You’ll have to get that there,” she told us. It was becoming clear that she wasn’t the most helpful cherub in the world. I described our predicament to her and she looked at our flight from Denver to Salt Lake and said something like, “hmmmm. I don’t think you’re going to make it” and then kept tapping away at her keyboard with a grimace.

At that moment, I felt a familiar feeling that I had experienced many times over the previous four days, but managed to suppress. This time though, the tears were on their way and there was nothing I could do to stop them. I managed to forgo any whimpering and just stood there with a stoic expression (that Norwegian part of me attempting to make itself known) as gallons of tears made a run for it.

The cherub glanced up and did a double-take when she realized that I was completely losing it. I could actually see the frost around her heart melting. Then she looked back at her computer and began furiously typing away again.

I looked at Rob and he said, “it’s going to be all right” as sweetly as he could.

“Okay,” cherub said. “I’ve made a note for your flight from Salt Lake to Bozeman to tell them that your flight is delayed and that they shouldn't give your seats away until the last possible minute. I’ve also put you on standby for the next flight from Salt Lake to Bozeman in case you miss the first one.” Then she told me not to worry, and as an afterthought she told us to wait and started typing again. “Ugh. That’s all I can do she told us,” shaking her head apologetically.

We thanked her and headed back to hell, aka the United concourse.

Robbie went to the bar, per usual and I sat on the ground by our now 90-minute-late Salt Lake flight because there were no seats. Plus, I didn’t have complete control over my emotions and I suspected that just about anything could set off the waterworks again. For example, I picked up the phone to call my family in Montana, but just the idea of hearing my mother’s voice left me hiding behind my book before I even punched one number into my cell phone. I had officially joined the crybaby crew. I’m just surprised I held out as long as I did.

A half hour later, after probably making 15 new friends, a drunken Robbie joined me on the floor. I decided that I should call Montana. My mother picked up and we immediately started figuring out alternate plans. She was looking up other flights on the computer and I was sitting with the phone dangling from my ear, when over the loudspeaker came what may as well have been the voice of God:

“Mike Hunt, please report to a white courtesy phone. Mike Hunt.” Just then my head whipped around and I managed to see Rob’s expression turn as he realized what he had just heard. The old Porky’s gag. I’ve never needed to hear a stupid joke so badly. We were both rolling on the ground laughing hysterically while my mother shouted into the phone wondering, “what’s so funny?”

“Oh nothing,” I responded and then looked around to see that no one else had apparently gotten the joke. Or maybe they had, but weren't so desperate for the comic relief.

When we finally made it to Salt Lake and sprinted to the Bozeman gate, our plane had already left. It had been delayed, but not enough. I stood in line to double-check that our names were on standby for the next flight to Bozeman, but I knew we wouldn’t make it. A man from West Yellowstone must have overheard our lamentations because he mentioned that we could try to get on flights to other cities and still make it to Big Sky.

“Missoula is only a three-hour drive away,” he told us. At this, I went back up to an agent to see if we could get to Butte, Billings, Missoula or somewhere else in the general region. We had even considered driving from Salt Lake, which would be a 7-hour drive or so.

The gate agent said that everything was oversold, but decided to look just in case. Miraculously, she told me, two seats had opened up on the next flight to Missoula that was set to leave at 9 p.m. I told her that we would take the seats and then called my parents. They were sitting forlorn eating barbecue in a restaurant in Bozeman, and offered to drive the three hours to pick us up from Missoula. At that moment, I noticed that the flight for Bozeman was boarding so I walked over to hear all of the standby names, fully knowing that our names wouldn’t be called. Robbie didn’t even feign interest; he sat talking on the phone to our sister.

There were four available standby slots. A couple was called first. And then, sweet fancy Moses, the woman said, “Robert Merry?”

I was stunned. “Yes!” I shouted and she looked at me as if to say, “you don’t look like a Robert.”

“But there’s two of us. Robert and Stephanie! We’re siblings! I have to go too!” There were about 15 other people waiting to fly standby and I could feel their evil glares.

“I don’t see your name,” the gate agent told me shaking her head. “Oh wait. Here you are. Sorry about that!”

And with that, I sprinted over to Robbie, we grabbed our bags and got onto our 50-person plane to Bozeman. I hate flying, but needless to say, I’ve never been so happy to be on a scary, little puddle-jumper. After discussing this fortuitous turn, Robbie and I decided that we must have had an angel watching over us. More specifically, a blond cherub at the Delta desk. I don’t know how else we would have been on the top of that standby list. (I need to start a late-night infomercial: "See! Crying really works!")

So Cherub, if you’re out there….thanks for everything. We made it to Bozeman. Our parents and two of our three bags awaited our arrival, and we celebrated Christmas with our family, just as it should be.