Why I Hate Denver: Day 1, the Airport Adventure

The first snow of the season is usually a call for celebration. For me, this usually entails a 30-second dance in the backyard and the consumption of snowflakes. This year, I witnessed my first snowfall at 8 a.m. on December 20th as I landed at Denver International Airport with my brother. It was supposed to be a 30-minute layover on my way from D.C. to Montana where my parents, sister, brother-in-law and niece were awaiting our arrival.

We had been circling over the airport for about half and hour, so I was a little anxious as we were taxiing at a turtle’s speed around the tarmac. I couldn’t stop tapping my foot and rubbing my palms together as I thought WE ARE MISSING OUR FLIGHT. But I figured that the weather that had hampered our arrival would also affect our departure, so I called Peapod for a little peace of mind. I gave him our flight number and heard him tapping away at his keyboard. He started to say something, but faltered.

“Oh wait. I just want to double check something. Did you say Denver to Montana?” he asked.

“What is it?” I knew something was up.

“Oh…well….ummmm….it says your flight is cancelled.”

A number of four-letter words pinballed around my head. GLAD was not one of them.

I called Montana to tell my parents the news, but said that I would figure something out. As all of my fellow-passengers filed out of the airplane, a woman with four small children turned around.

“I heard you say your flight was cancelled. I’m so sorry,” she told me with apologetic eyebrows and I thanked her for her concern.

“We’ll figure something out,” I replied optimistically.

Perhaps this woman was a Denver resident. Maybe she hopped into a four-wheel-drive taxi and headed home. More likely the following few days were more hellish for her than they were for Robbie and me, because she had an entourage of little ones.

As soon as we exited the airplane, I hit the ground running. I looked at the departures and everything was either delayed or cancelled. Intrigue. This did not bode well. I went to an agent at a random United desk and asked what our next step should be.

“The customer service line,” he told me and pointed to a quickly growing, mile-long line of disgruntled passengers.

More four-letter words on the brain, but I decided that I could keep it together for at least another hour or two. As some uplifting parting words, the agent told us that only one flight had left Denver at 7 that morning and he doubted any more would depart for the rest of the day.

As we waited in line, rumors began flying.

“Well I heard Denver was supposed to get four feet of snow”

“It’s supposed to keep snowing for at least four days.”

“We’ve done something to infuriate God and He doesn’t want us to get home for Christmas.”

At moments like this, people are either super friendly, completely withdrawn, or total assholes. I quickly learned that my brother was the first variety. This was sort of a shame, because I prefer the second method. (Thank God though that neither of us is the third choice; that could have been awkward.)

I called the Scooby. I soon realized that Scoobs is a great person to date because (a) he is a frequent world-traveler and knows what to do when encountered with just about any flight problem and (b) his mom works for American Airlines and has all kinds of crazy access that us poor laypeople know nothing about. He told me that the line I was standing in was probably useless and that calling United directly would be my best bet.

On kind of a funny (in a sick, demented way) note, Scooby Snacks had a flight from D.C. to Denver that same day because he planned to spend Christmas in Breckenridge. Before my plane even landed in Denver, his flight had already been cancelled, but his mother, the miracle-worker, had already gotten him another ticket for Friday.

We stayed in line as I frantically called United. I expected a monotone voice to come on and tell me that I would be on hold for two hours waiting for the next available agent. Instead, I got something much, much worse. After punching different buttons and shouting “AGENT” into the phone, I got….

a busy signal. How could this be?

I tried a couple more times. Same thing. I looked around and noticed some red phones nearby. These phones were supposed to be a direct line to United agents. I left Rob in line and picked one up. In about 10 seconds, I was talking to a real-life human being. He told me a few more troubling bits of information: the agent couldn’t guarantee us on a flight to Bozeman, Montana until December 27th. My flight from Bozeman back to D.C. was on the 28th. I told him he needed to find a way to get us to another city, so we could get to Bozeman. Here comes the second bit of sad info: United flies from either Denver to Bozeman, four flights per day, or from Chicago to Bozeman once every week on a Saturday (the 23rd), but that flight was already oversold.

I got back into line with Robbie and told him that we needed to rent a car to get the hell out of there before the snow got any worse. Suddenly Rob became trapped passenger, variety three. He thought this was the stupidest idea in the history of the world and wasn’t having it. Fine. We continued waiting in line.

When we finally got up to the front of the line a woman whose nametag read Bitch-head (at least, I think that’s what it said) helped us. She spoke to us for about 30 seconds and then a short little troll of a man (her supervisor maybe?) came up and announced that all agents were to report to the break room for a mandatory meeting.

“I’m sorry,” Bitch-head told us. “My manager thinks that it’s more important for me to go to this meeting than to help you.” And with that, she and her five coworkers were gone.

***

Fifteen minutes later, the United agents trickled back to their desks. Bitch-head was nowhere to be found. Another woman took her seat, I told her that Bitch-head had been sitting there and helping us. Another United agent said, “well, do we look nicer?” Was this a trick question? They all looked pretty pissed off to me. The new woman began to help us and just then Bitch-head strolled up, grabbed her coat, scarf and purse.

“You’re not staying?” another United agent asked.

“WHAT? They’re only giving us per diem. What’s the incentive? We’ll get paid if we stay or if we go.” At this point she was getting louder and redder. “So what’s the point in staying? I mean, do they even value us at all?” And then she said something like, “I’m outta here,” and she hopped on her broom and flew away. It was all pretty mystifying.

New agent sighed, looked at her computer screen, sighed some more, puffed up her cheeks, pursed her lips. She typed, and typed some more. Then she told us there was nothing she could do. She offered to put us on the flight on the 27th, but then” “Oh. Actually now that flight is booked. Would you like me to put you on the flight on the 29th?”

As we walked away from the desk with our shoulders hunched, Robbie said, “This is how Trains, Planes and Automobiles starts.”

The snow was falling more and more quickly and the forecasts weren’t looking good, so we walked away from the pointless line, and I called Montana while Rob called a hotel. He made a reservation at the Renaissance Hotel in Stapleton (by the old Denver airport) and after that, we decided there was nothing left to do but go to the bar.

It was 10 a.m. Denver time and I was sitting at the Wolfgang Puck bar in the United terminal drinking Fat Tire beer. I followed that with another beer, a bloody Mary and some chicken fingers and fries. Rob opted for two pizzas and, if memory serves, 4 Dewar’s on the rocks (make it a double, which apparently means make it a quadruple in Denver language). We made friends with a cute family from Tacoma, Washington and Robbie made stupid jokes with the bartender, who rolled her eyes and poured even larger glasses of Dewar’s.

By noon I had a hangover, and decided to get to the hotel. Robbie and I waited outside for the airport shuttle for about an hour. I called the airport to make sure shuttles were still running and they said yes, but a little slowly. It never came. There was a line for taxis at least 60 people long, but only one cab arrived.

After a while, I decided to do something “productive” and started calling United in the hopes that seats would miraculously open up. Robbie and I went to the main terminal because we thought that the United agents there would be somehow more helpful than the customer service representatives. I called on a red phone in the main terminal and asked if we could fly standby on the next flight. The agent first told me how sad it was that someone with the last name Merry was going to miss Christmas. If I hadn’t been so hungover/drunk, I might have cried. Then she told me that she couldn’t put me on standby, and that I had to speak to someone in the airport.

“Do I have to wait until tomorrow,” I asked her, because word had already spread that the airport would reopen the next day, Thursday, at noon. She told me that under the circumstances, the agents would put me on standby for the next day even though it wasn’t protocol.

At about that time, I got a call from Scooby’s mother. She had contacted her boss who had contacted someone at United and she had been able to get me on a flight on the evening of Saturday, the 23rd of December. The flight would go to Salt Lake and then I would take a Delta flight to Bozeman from there. I thanked her profusely, but in the back of my head I kept thinking, “Saturday? I’ll be long gone by Saturday.”

Time for another snaking line. Robbie informed me that it would behoove us to switch off. We would each wait 20 minutes and that way, we could take naps and he could sleep off his early afternoon hangover. I knew better and should have called bullshit on his plan, but I felt kind of sorry for the guy. I could feel a migraine coming on, but I sent him off to pass out and relieve me in 20 minutes. A moment later, I looked over and he was lying on his back next to the electronic ticket machines with his baseball cap over his face.

I started talking to the two people in front of me. One was a pretty blond from Florida who told me she was a newscaster. The other guy was extremely friendly and from Hawaii. After ten minutes he told us that he had flown from Honolulu to San Francisco to Denver and he was trying to get to Detroit for his mother’s funeral. He told us that his siblings had held off the funeral for an extra couple of days so that he could be there for it, but now it looked like he would miss it. He was still so upbeat. I told him that I was sorry and he just said, “it’s okay, I’ve done my mourning. She knew I loved her.”

As I approached the front of the line, (let the record show that I waited for over an hour and Robbie never woke up) I called Rob in case we could get our tickets reissued or something. I could see him from where I was standing and watched him sleep through all three of my calls to his cell phone.

Another agent. As I walked up to her, I gave her my most winning smile. “HI!” I said a little too loudly and then I asked her how she was doing. “Fine,” she said. She was all business. I told her I needed to get on a standby flight for Bozeman.

“You’ll have to do that tomorrow,” she said and then called out “NEXT!”

I tapped Rob on the shoulder, nudged his stomach, kicked his leg and finally yelled in his face before he awoke. I told him the news and he fell right back to sleep, so I talked to the guy sitting next to me. Another heartbreaking story about how he needed to get back to his mother in Baton Rouge who was dying of cancer. It was like I was walking through the chapters of a Chicken Soup for the Soul.

After a while, I told my brother that I wanted to try to catch the shuttle to the hotel again. The idea of sleeping in an airport with my impending migraine could not have been less appetizing. Rob wasn’t so keen to wait in the blizzard for our shuttle to come, so I told him to wait (or sleep) inside and I would stand outside and call him if the bus came. He wasn’t surprised an hour later when I came back inside, freezing and frustrated. I once again called the hotel to see if the shuttles were running. Their response was less than promising. “It should be,” they said.

The main terminal was packed with people. Some stranded passengers had set up little refugee camps. People sequestered themselves within suitcase walls and transformed their coats into sad little mattresses. Every chair was taken; people sat on stalled luggage carousels. I have never seen so many people openly weeping in public.

Robbie came up with the brilliant idea to go back to the United terminal, which was located in a separate concourse. We walked over to the security line which was deserted. I had a feeling that the TSA personnel wouldn’t let us in with expired boarding passes, but they didn’t seem to care. They just wanted to make sure that we didn’t have any liquids with us.

Once we got over to concourse B, we had to find an outlet. I made the idiotic decision to put my phone and iPod chargers in the boot bag that I checked. The ever-so-helpful customer service representatives had informed us that we wouldn’t be able to get our checked bags back until we reached our destination. Our luggage would supposedly be on the first flight to Bozeman whether or not we were on that flight.

Our first stroke of luck was that Robbie had packed his phone charger in his carry-on. Our second stroke was that we use the same charger even though we have different phones. After we reached the concourse, we cruised up and down the corridors looking for outlets. It appeared that there was one outlet for every gate, and even though this concourse seemed deserted, every outlet appeared to be occupied by other people’s laptops and phone chargers. After cruising the gates for 15 minutes, we found a bank of payphones with 4 outlets. Eureka.

Rob stood by the windows and made some calls and I curled up in a seat and tried to doze off into dreamland. Unfortunately every seat had armrests, so if I wanted to be supine, I quickly realized that the floor was my only option.

After a few minutes of fruitless sleeping attempts, a man came up and sat two seats away from me. This seemed odd, because the terminal was pretty much empty. A moment later a woman walked up to Rob and handed him a small bag, which included everything a stranded passenger might need: toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, etc. As the woman walked over to me to hand me her last bag, the strange man sitting near me, popped out of his seat and made a beeline for her. She seemed a bit startled, but handed him the bag and told me she would be back for more.

So much for ladies first.

He turned to me and reiterated, “she said she would come back with more.”

“Oh really? Thanks!” I said sarcastically gave him my best obviously fake smile. I guess he got the hint, because he moved to a different area, but as he was walking away, he tried to make small talk and said something along the lines of, “I wonder what’s in the bag,” as if it was the most exciting Christmas gift he had ever received. My head hurt too much to respond.

Rob left shortly after to go find some food and, I suspected, alcohol. The terminal was freezing. I had on my ski coat, a hat and gloves, and I was still shivering. Generally when I have a migraine, the only thing that helps is to be in a place with no light and no sound. This is understandably difficult when stranded inside of an airport. Fluorescent lights glared down on me and every 30 seconds, a new announcement came over the loud speaker. Robbie came back an hour later with standby boarding passes. The next flight to Bozeman would be the next night at 8 p.m. and airport personnel claimed the airport would be shut down until Thursday, late afternoon.

I felt like crying. I couldn’t imagine being stranded in this airport for another 24 hours. Every time I closed my eyes, I tried to envision myself curling up under a puffy white comforter atop king-sized pillows. The reality was seeping into my fantasy though. It was hard to forget the fact that I was wearing jeans and hiking boots. At one point Robbie went to the gift shop to buy me a sweatshirt. It was royal blue and said Colorado in big letters.

Robbie curled up under the phone bank and I got down on the ground next to him under my new blue sweatshirt. We both closed our eyes and steeled ourselves for a long night.

Not five minutes later, another announcement came over the loudspeaker.

An airport official informed us that city buses would be arriving momentarily. “So if you have a hotel reservation, well then, um, cheer!” the man laughed.

I sat up and started throwing things into my purse. Rob didn’t move.

“Come on!” I yelled at him. “This is great!”

“There’s no way they’ll still have our reservation, and besides, I don’t even know if the buses are going to our hotel. It’s all the way over in Stapleton.”

I couldn’t believe it. Was this my brother or some drunker version of Eeyore?

“Well do you want to TRY or would you rather sleep here?” Before he could answer, I said, “give me the hotel reservation number” and I dialed the phone number of our hotel. The woman at the hotel couldn’t find our reservation and when I gave her our reservation number she told me I had the wrong hotel.

“All of our reservation codes start with 16 not HL,” she told me. I heard a man yelling at her in the background. “Oh wait. Is this Rob? Oh sorry. Yes, we have your reservation.”

“Don’t give anyone our room. We’re coming!” I yelled and then accidentally hung up without saying goodbye. As we rode the train to the main concourse, people screamed into cell phones attempting to get hotel reservations. It sounded like people were having luck; apparently there were still rooms available for those willing to try. But there were still a ton of people sleeping on the floor within their suitcase forts as we exited the airport.

A long line of buses sat in front of the airport and the first one was headed for heaven: Stapleton. The people boarding the bus to Stapleton were beaming. One couple was especially excited. A minute later though I heard the woman say to her husband: “Oh God! The tickets! Our tickets! They’re gone. They were in my wallet. Where’s my wallet?” She immediately started bawling. Her husband ran back into the airport and emerged twenty minutes later with the lost wallet.

It took close to an hour to get to Stapleton, which is about 45 minutes longer than usual. Robbie and I checked in, and then headed up to our room. As I opened the door, a rush of freezing air hit my face. The window had been open. Rob walked over to close it, only to realize that enough snow to make a snowman had accumulated inside of our room.

We went back downstairs for a different room.

“Oh, and if possible, could we get two beds instead of one? We’re siblings,” I informed the woman. No luck.

Robbie and I brushed our teeth with our emergency airport kit toothbrushes and crawled under the covers of our king-sized bed. I considered building a pillow wall between us so that it would be more like two beds, but I was just too exhausted.

It was just like my dream. A heavy white comforter, king-sized pillows, pitch dark and totally quiet.