Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
We took a brief trip to Houston last weekend to see Sue’s brother Paul who had been in a serious accident. Originally we planned to arrive early Saturday afternoon and return home on the late flight to Riverton on Monday.
As they say, the best laid plans.
We did make it to Denver late Monday afternoon, but as anyone who flies to Riverton since our elected geniuses decided to cancel the contract with Denver Air Connect, an airline they never missed a flight, and go with the bigger, better, more reliable United Airlines subsidiary Sky West knows, (where is the sarcasm font) there is no guarantee when flying to or from Fremont County.
The problem is we’re just not that important to the corporate giant, a giant “too big to fail” by the standards of the federal government. Try that stance as an independent business owner and see how quickly the heartless rules of capitalism kick in. But for the big banks, big companies, and huge donors to federally elected officials know, it’s corporate socialism if you have enough money.
We fly often, and I’ve learned to use the tracking features on Flightaware.com, and the United Airlines app tied to it to see where the arriving flight we’re about to take back home from Denver is coming in from.
Last Monday our original flight was inbound from North Carolina. It made it on time but was diverted to a more lucrative market. No problem, the next flight was coming in from Tulsa, and just a few minutes late. It arrived in plenty of time but was rerouted to Vail (big money with the beautiful people.) I was getting a little suspicious when our inbound flight was switched a final time from Fargo. It made it too but went somewhere else.
After an hour delay a tractor towed a snow-covered jet into our gate. It obviously had not moved in a while. After a show of “trying” to start it, they finally canceled the flight. Off to the overwhelmed United “help desk” with an eventual shuttle to a nearby motel, but they were full, so we received a digital voucher for a Lyft driver and $80 in meal vouchers.
I can’t say that it was a terrible experience because we met some wonderful people stranded in the same predicament on the B Concourse at DIA.
The world is a small place sometimes. There is some truth in that game, the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”
The small world first arrived at the security gate in Houston. As I walked through the scanner a TSA agent a row back saw my Wyoming Cowboy cap and asked, “You from Wyoming or just a fan?”
“Riverton,” I answered. “You a Cowboy?”
“Yep, Glenrock,” he said.
I shared a couple of names from teaching and coaching friends in Glenrock and he knew them all, telling me he’d graduated with one of their daughters. In Houston, the fourth largest city in America there was a connection to Converse County.
Once you get to DIA you always meet people you know from Riverton, Casper, Cody, Lovell, or any of several dozen other towns.
We’d been through the United shuffle a few times, so we knew the terrain but there were a few people who hadn’t experienced the joy of it yet.
One of them recognized me from my County10 mugshot, (Yes, and she introduced herself anyway.)
Lindsay Curran and her son Cody were returning from an equestrian event. Lindsay is a speech diagnostician at Wyoming Indian, a place where I know almost the entire staff. My friend Rod Frederick is Cody’s teacher at Wind River Elementary.
Sue started a conversation with a grandma from Thermopolis returning home from a visit to her grandkids. Carol Johnson was a retired elementary teacher, and they hit it off well, talking about teaching and their common interest in grandchildren. Carol shared a Lyft ride with us to and from the hotel.
The Lyft drivers were a story in themselves. Jeff, the first driver, wore a black, knit Raider’s cap. As a fan of the same frustrating franchise, we hit it off, crowded into the seat of his tiny Subaru. A former soldier, he loved his Lyft gig.
Roger, a guy who described himself as having escaped from a 12-year career as a cubicle-confined accountant, loved the six-hour-a-day schedule he kept driving his Nissan took us back to DIA at 6:45 am the next morning.
An Alaskan native, who recently moved to Riverton three years ago showed me photos of the fish he’d caught off the coast of Guatemala over the last 10 days and lamented returning from 85-degree perfection to the then 36 below temperature in Rivercity. I didn’t catch his name, but I did show him a few pics of the big rainbows and walleye I’ve reeled in.
Then there was Jack Fisher, a videographer from Lander who was returning home from a month-long session in Togo and Ghana on the African West Coast. We hit it off immediately, talking about the travel books we both enjoy and authors Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, William Least Heat Moon, and others of the adventure/travel genre.
Jack has an interesting blog and likes to interview authors. His next gig is in Mongolia later this year. His girlfriend had to take off work in Lander to retrieve him so we gave him a ride to Smith’s to cut down her travel time. A very interesting career, and lifestyle he has, and I am intrigued that he is able to do it from Lander.
There were a few more mundane things on the homebound flight. A guy sat in the very front of the plane holding a huge box of very pricey Voodoo Donuts, a prize he purchased with those United Vouchers.
We were sure to spend every penny allotted to us by United, starting with breakfast at Elway’s in the center of Concourse B. The waiter dutifully scanned three of the $20 vouchers and took a big tip along the way.
As we approached our departing gate, Sue stopped at one of those convenience stores that line all four concourses and started piling items on the counter. The friendly gal with the eastern European accent behind the counter kept a running total until we hit $20.11. Sue dug out a penny and a dime, and our vouchers were maxed out.
The people we met in this brief inconvenience were top-notch. We thoroughly enjoyed the delay and tried to make the best of it.
Upon returning back home, our son Brian showed up for lunch a few minutes after we arrived and had this gem to offer, “United the new Great Lakes.”
As they say in the movie Absence of Malice, “Is it true? No, but it’s accurate.”
For those who don’t remember Great Lakes, and their more popular nickname “Great Mistakes” it’s not a compliment, but it’s accurate for United.