Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Colorado Travelog #5
Rifle, CO - Saturday, 2 Jul 2022, 4:30pm

When we arrived in Glenwood Springs around midday today we found some bad news. Actually, the day would be full of bad news. One piece of bad news pertained to our planned hike at Hanging Lake. It's gone to a permit system, and permits are sold out for today and tomorrow.

I've written before about the importance of being prepared to "call an audible". While we don't plan our trips, per se, with specific Plans B, C, etc., we usually have an awareness of other things we can do if Plan A gets blocked for whatever reason. Today our Plan B started with Rifle Arch, about an hour west of Glenwood Springs.



The 3 mile roundtrip trail starts by traversing high desert landscape. Hard-scrabble dirt is studded with scrub and the occasional stand of small trees. We know the arch is somewhere in those distant mountains, but which one? It's too far off to see yet.



After cresting and crossing one plateau the trail drops through a small gorge and climbing the foot of one of the mountains. Here the arch comes into view. It's in approximately the center of the photo above.



We hiked to the end of the formal trail where there's a nice view of the arch from just below it. From here it's a rock scramble up underneath the arch. Many hikers do it, but we didn't quite have the energy today. ...And we also had a Plan C and Plan D in mind. To replace Plan A we'd need Plan B + (Plan C and/or Plan D).

Maine Week Travelog #Ω-1
Applebee's in South Portland, ME - Monday, 21 Jun 2021, 10:30pm.

I'm jumping my backlog of blogs about our Maine Week trip to post an entry in real time. It's Monday evening and we're supposed to be almost home right now, but instead we're eating late night dinner at an Applebee's restaurant off I-95 nearly 3,000 miles from home before driving in the wee hours of the morning to Boston for an 0600 flight home.

We had a good plan for getting home today. Emphasis on had. We were supposed to fly out of Portland, Maine (PWM) to SFO with a connection in Chicago. We managed our schedule cautiously today and arrived at the airport over 2 hours early. Our aircraft arrived on its inbound flight. Everything looked good to go. But then just 5 before we were supposed to starting boarding the delays started.

Rolling Delays

At first it was a delay of 10-15 minutes. No problem; these things happen.

Next it was a delay of 20-30 minutes. That would make our connection in Chicago short but still totally doable.

Then it was a delay of 45 minutes. Connection getting really tight.

The delay stretched to 1 hour. "Your connections are all safe," the gate agent told all the passengers. "There's a ground stop in Chicago, so your connections will be delayed, too."

...Except while the agent was saying all flights at Chicago were being delayed, the facts were showing otherwise. Flights were mostly running on time. Ours was one of few delayed.

Next the agents admitted that connections were going to be missed and started rebooking everyone. The first choice we had was to wait in Chicago tonight for two days and continue to SF on Wednesday morning. "Or you can figure out how to get to Boston," she offered, "And take a flight out of BOS tomorrow at 6am."

The flight to Chicago was starting to board so we stuck with it. We even booked a nice hotel for two nights— at our own expense— to try to stay productive at work while waiting out this ridiculous travel snafu.

On the Plane, Off the Plane. More Delays.

Once we'd all gotten boarded the crew announced we had to get back off. Our previously full flight was now only about half full as many of  passengers had already rebooked to other options. The remainder of us filed back into the terminal for another round of rolling delays. The flight would leave at 6pm. Then 6:30. Then 7. Then 8. We stuck with our reservation knowing that we'd already arranged a place to crash in Chicago.

Then they canceled our flight.

I saw that coming. When an airline needs to cancel a delayed flight they first try to get as many passengers as possible rebooked onto other flights. Then, when they do cancel it, the stats they have to report to the DOT look better because fewer people are stranded. Well, we were part of those stats.

Because I saw it coming I'd already put in a placeholder for Plan D. I booked last-minute tickets on Southwest leaving tomorrow night for a not-awful price.

Plan E: Same as Plan C, but Worse.

At this point we could have asked American Airlines to cancel our reservations and refund the tickets. We had alternate flights already booked on Southwest for Tuesday night. But first I figured we should see how AA offered to reaccommodate us. Surprise! It was Plan C: get ourselves to Boston and take an 0600 Tuesday morning.

The Boston flight has pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it leaves at 0600 and arrives SF 0930, so the disruption to our work schedules is minimal. On the minus side, it leaves at 0600 so we're looking at a sleepless night tonight. Also on the minus side, we have to get to Boston on our own. There's an inexpensive bus, but the next departure— at 3:15am— arrives too late at BOS for us. Lyft was about $150 but said it'd take 2-3 hours for a car even to pick us up. WTF? And rental cars had become very expensive— around $350.

Ultimately we chose to rent a car for $350ish and drive ~2 hours to BOS. At the rental depot we saw several familiar faces from the gate. We got our car: a shitty Toyota C-HR. It's tiny, the engine is asthmatic, and the road noise in the cabin is thunderously loud even at 35mph. 2 hours on the highway to Boston is going to be a looong drive.

And that brings us to where we are now: at a roadside Applebee's. We decided to wait out part of the time before our 6am flight at a restaurant open late. We needed dinner anyway. This will put us on the road until after 1am but at least we'll have full stomachs. And lots of caffeine.

But hey, Applebee's didn't suck. This time. And while I ate my supper I got through to someone at the hotel in Chicago who assured me that they wouldn't charge me for having to cancel my non-refundable stay. I hope they mean it; it's almost $350 down the drain (in addition to the $350 rental car) otherwise.

Keep reading: 2am at Boston Airport

Inland Empire Fail-log
Sitting at my desk - Fri, 28 May 2021. 4:30pm.

Right now I was supposed to be aboard a train on a journey of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (and shoes) to Spokane... for the second time this month. Yes, we enjoyed our trip to the Inland Northwest two weeks ago so much that we started planning a return trip before we even got home. I had everything planned, down to getting a discount coupon for parking at the airport. But trouble struck this afternoon. Our flight on Southwest Airlines was delayed 3 hours.



In many cases a flight delay isn't a huge problem. I mean, it's not desirable, but it's not necessarily the end of the world. Except here it set off a chain of dominoes falling over.

By arriving at Spokane 3 hours late tonight we'd arrive after all the rental car agencies are closed. That meant we wouldn't be able to drive 75 miles to the small town where our hotel reservation was. We'd have to book a new hotel near the airport, and book a new car in the morning, and spend additional time tomorrow driving to where we planned to go hiking. All this was possible— I checked— but still left us with the question of whether the salvage effort was worth it. We decided it wasn't.

Let's Go Shopping!

I've canceled the flights, the rental car, and 2 of the hotel nights. Fortunately those were all refundable. One hotel night is not refundable (it's too late to cancel) and is a loss of $85. But that's tonight's hotel and it was going to be a loss regardless of what we chose at this point.

We didn't cancel this trip without an alternative in mind. "Let's just stay home" was absolutely not a playable Plan C! Instead we're going to Los Angeles. To go shopping. Car shopping!

Update: It all seemed like a great plan until our car trip suffered delays, too! At least those were traffic related and not mechanical.