Treeman: The West is the Best

It was an auspicious start. As we taxied away from the gate at the Tallahassee Airport at 6:00 in the morning, the pilot came on the intercom, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a computer malfunction and will need to shut the plane down for a minute and see if it will come back up. The emergency lights will be the only thing on, I apologize for the inconvenience." You could hear a pin drop when he shut it down. We all sat in silence until he restarted and told us it had worked, then everybody let out a collective sigh. We would make our connection in Atlanta. I was to be a challenging day of travel to Colorado.

On the flight to Denver the two young children behind me amused themselves by kicking the back of my seat and squealing intermittently the whole flight.

I had arranged for a rental car through Priceline with Advantage. When we got to their pick up lot there was a long line and only two people working the desks. After a 30 minute wait the clerk handed me the keys, he said "You don't mind a Corolla instead of a Kia do you?" I shook my head and left to find our car.

The little Corolla was filthy with so many dents and scratches I couldn't take pictures of all of them. The inside was stained and smelled like old shoes. We crammed the bags in the trunk and got in line to go out the gate. Two cars in front of us an older couple must have gotten in the wrong car and the lady checking us out told them to back up, so they did, which caused the car in front of me to start backing up, so I put it in reverse and turned around to try and see out of the muddy rear window. I hear a horn blow and felt a bump. Yes I had backed into another car. All manner of chaos ensued.

Fortunately no damage except to my families ears due to my sudden inability to control my temper. We got out of Denver only to sit in stalled traffic on I-70 for an hour. Hey, at least the view was nice.

Stopping at a Mexican Restaurant I had a beer. The temperature was 61 and windy. I forgot about the trip out, almost.