Happy Birthday Adam!

Adam was out of town for his birthday this year...allowing him to avoid all the birthday wishes that he isn't big on anyway. Here is an email he sent describing his journey from Seattle to Tuscon...it was much more eventful than planned. It sounds like a rough sketch of screenplay for a movie.

Wednesday, February 16th

2:00pm this is when I was supposed to leave for the airport, but I was late and still frantically packing….

2:35pm Finally left for the airport

4:35pm board my plane bound for Salt Lake where I will get a connecting flight to Tuscan. While approaching Salt Lake, the pilot tells us that there is a big storm at the SLC airport and we might have to be diverted to Twin Falls, ID. We fly around a bit to wait to see if we can land. After an extra hour in-flight they decide to try and land at SLC. The decent was a roller coast ride, but we made it on the ground.

8:30pm now at SLC airport. Because of coming in late, I missed my flight to Tuscan and there are no other flights. The next available flight is the next morning at 10am. There are no rooms at the hotels next to the airport, so they get me a room at a hotel downtown. I go down to the baggage claim to get my bags, but they said it would take 1 or 2 hours to get my bags and I would be better off just leaving the bags and they will be on the flight to Tuscan. I say OK, and I’m off to my shuttle to downtown SLC

9:30pm now in Shuttle to downtown and manage to hit downtown right as the Utah Jazz game is getting out. So it ends up taking about and hour from the airport to the hotel

10:30pm arrive at the hotel and the power is out because of the big storm. They have a generator to have hallway lights on, and then they were handing out glow sticks to help you get settled in your room.

10:45pm finally get to my room and go to bed

Thursday, February 17th (my birthday)

5:00am power comes on as well as light next to bed and TV…I turn everything off

5:01am try and go back to sleep

7:00am get up and take a COLD shower (no hot water because of the power being out most of the night)

8:00am get shuttle to airport – there were several of us in the shuttle and we all get out at the airport and everyone takes off. I look back at the driver and she has this bugged look on her face. I look back and said, “the airline gave you a voucher for the ride…right?” and she says, “yeah, but that is ALL I got”. I raise one eyebrow and give her a few bucks. About 5 minutes later I wish I would have not given it to her.

10:00am – board the plane, get settled in my window seat. I was pretty tired so I closed the window and I was gently falling asleep as we were taking off. Then just after take off…SLAM!...the lady next to me slams the window open! I open one really tired eye and have this ‘why did you wake me up’ look on my face and she says rather snootily “I like to look out the window when we take off.” I don’t respond…I give her the silent treatment the rest of the flight.

11:30am – arrive in Tuscan, get off plane and go to baggage claim. Everyone around me gets their bags and leaves the airport. The conveyer belt stops and no bags for me. I go to the baggage claim and they look for about 30 minutes for my bags and they have them. Turns out they arrived the night before. I didn’t even ask how that happened.

12:30pm – get a taxi to go to the resort for the conference. I like to have a lot of fruits and veggies that they don’t have at the hotel so I ask the taxi driver to stop at the grocery store. I get my groceries and all the lines are super long to check out. I pick the shortest line but it turns out the guy doing the checking out for my line normally works in the produce part of the store and was just brought up to help out because of the demand. I wait about 20 mintues…yes 20 minutes before I am getting checked out. While he is scanning my stuff, I look around and all the other checkers are standing around talking to each other because they’ve taken care of all the other customers.

2:00 pm Close to 24 hours later, I arrive at my class in Tuscan…..