>Seattle, Denver, A Blizzard, and a Tornado. Not Much Happening Here. You?

>If I wasn’t around here much last week, it’s only because I… wasn’t around.

I left on a plane early Thursday morning for a blogger trip to Seattle. I’m not generally afraid of flying, but when the pilot started talking on the PA, I’ll admit I got a little nervous… I’ve flown enough times to know CaptainSpeak, and how to translate it. Check it out:

THE CAPTAIN SAID: Ladies and gentlemen, we’re anticipating some choppy air up ahead.

TRANSLATION: What I’m actually anticipating is that we’re all gonna die!

THE CAPTAIN SAID: I’m going to turn on the fasten seatbelts sign now.

TRANSLATION: Seatbelts are no good in a plane crash! Prepare to die!

THE CAPTAIN SAID: We’re facing some strong head winds and our flight’s going to take a little longer than normal.

TRANSLATION: Head winds! Did you hear me? HEAD WINDS! We’re gonna die!

THE CAPTAIN SAID: I’m going to ask the flight attendants to be seated now until the ride evens out a bit.

TRANSLATION: What the hell does it matter? We’re all gonna die!

THE CAPTAIN SAID: We’re expecting to see some turbulence during the next hundred miles or so.

TRANSLATION: Don’t be fooled by my soothing voice. We’re gonna die!

THE CAPTAIN SAID: We do ask that you stay in your seats at this time.

TRANSLATION: And start texting your loved ones, because we’re gonna die!

Miraculously, we somehow made it to Seattle without dying, but let me tell you. It was ROUGH. And we weren’t alone. Just about everyone who flew into Seattle for the event had a bumpy flight. One blogger told me her head got knocked against the window three times on their descent into Seattle, and two people on the plane threw up.

I’ll say no more about the actual event here, only because contractually, I CAN’T. (You can, however, read about it here.) What I will say is that it was wonderful, but I was absolutely dreading the flight home, because it included a connection in Denver.

My experiences flying into Denver have been decidedly unwonderful. Every time I’ve flown into Denver, I’ve had a bad flight. More often than not, I’ve also been delayed in Denver, and seen lots of other delayed passengers there as well. So when I schedule a connecting flight, I make sure it’s not connecting in Denver. This time, however, I had no control.

Sure enough, as the plane began its descent into the Denver area, we hit major turbulence. Like, the WORST turbulence I’ve ever experienced. I’ve heard about the plane suddenly dropping thousands of feet, but that had never happened to me until this particular flight. And it didn’t just happen once- It happened two or three times in a row.

TERRIFIED.

Eventually, we bounced down onto the runway more or less intact, and as my heart rate slowly returned to normal, I tried to look on the bright side: The flight was on time. I still had 30 minutes to make my connecting flight to Nashville and then I would be HOME.

My Nashville travel companions and I hopped off our plane and raced down the concourse to our connecting flight. We were overjoyed to see that it was on schedule. But as we prepared to board, some other passenger laughed cruelly at us.

“This flight’s been delayed,” she said. “Until 12:30. Midnight.”

What?

WHAT?!

Yes. Our 7:55pm flight had been delayed to 12:30am, and was scheduled to arrive in Nashville at 4:30am. Maybe. At the time, it was still on the ground in San Antonio with mechanical problems, and they weren’t sure it would be arriving at all.

Glumly, Carrie, Calie, Jamie, Tori and I headed for Customer Service to figure out what our options were. As it turned out, Frontier Airlines only had two flights to Nashville on Sunday- One seat was available on the 1:55pm flight and seven seats were available on the 7pm flight. We went ahead and rebooked for the 7pm flight. Fortunately, the next day was Sunday, so our husbands all could handle our kids alone for one more day.

After hours of paperwork, negotiating of hotel vouchers, and waiting for the shuttle, we arrived at an airport W Hotel, which looked a lot like a low-budget MTV Real World house. We checked in, walked over to a nearby Applebee’s and proceeded to have a bizarre late dinner at what was clearly a Denver hotspot. It was trivia night, and it was SERIOUS BIZNESS, as we learned after Carrie yelled out an answer and was publicly reprimanded by the hostess. We tried our best to keep silent after that, but some of the answers were SO OBVIOUS and people at the bar looked SO CONF– USED that I resorted to helpfully coughing the answers to them.

The night ended with couples spontaneously standing up and slow dancing together. In Applebees. Yeah. It was that kind of night.

The next morning, we got up and took a cab into downtown Denver. The day was sunny and bright and we had a truly AMAZING brunch at my new favorite restaurant, Rioja.

By the time we came back outside, clouds had filled the sky. We headed over to 16th Street for some shopping. With each block we walked, it grew colder and colder, until suddenly…

There came A FREAKING BLIZZARD.

Seriously, it snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed

And so I did what any sensible woman would do when faced with this kind of adversity.

I shopped.

And after that, I took refuge with my blogging friends in a restaurant until it was time to call a cab back to the hotel and take the shuttle on to the airport. We were very concerned about our flight being delayed again, but after a thorough de-icing of the plane, we took off, and had a relatively smooth flight. MIRACLE OF MIRACLES. I finally pulled back into my driveway at midnight Sunday night.

Whew.

The next day, tornadoes hit Nashville and the surrounding area. I was home alone when the storm came through, and when the house began making noises I’d never heard before and the weather people on television started telling me to go to my safe place wearing a bike helmet and carrying an air horn so that people would be able to find me later (I kid you not), I ran to my downstairs bathroom. I stood there nervously for a few minutes before realizing that in my panic, I had grabbed my cell phone and my… purse.

My purse.

So that I’d have my ID if I wanted to order drinks in Oz, I guess!

So. I survived Seattle. I survived Denver. I survived an unexpected blizzard. I survived a tornado (although I had to take an alternate route and drive around several trees to pick up my kids five minutes away, which was scary).

Next up: a visit from the in-laws (tomorrow), Punky’s seventh birthday (Saturday), and a trip next week to Mom 2.0 in New Orleans!

Pray for me.