Flying to Colorado

Flying to Colorado this time was an absolute adventure. I definitely had issues both ways. On the way there, my flight was totally changed. I got about six calls from Delta alerting me for a change. The problem with their system though is that they tell you there’s a change four times and then you have to hit the number two for them to tell you exactly what the change is. When I got to the airport, I found out that my flight had been changed from Delta to United Airlines. While generally a move in the right direction it was a little frustrating having to go all the way to the United terminal, pay the baggage fee (which I get free from Delta on American Express), but I did like the fact that I didn’t have to stop in Salt Lake.

When I actually got on the flight, the United flight attendant asked me how I was doing. I gave him an honest “okay”. Because we’re all packed in not moving anywhere, he pushed me in a little bit. I relayed the story of being rebooked on United from an original Delta flight. He laughed and said, “Delta = doesn’t ever leaves the airport.” Having been stuck on Delta number of times that gave me a genuine laughs although I know United has a fair amount but doesn’t ever leave the airport as well. 🙂 The flight was mostly uneventful until getting fairly near Denver. Further, an area that gets 300 days of sun a year, every time I’m there. Usually, whether it’s a factor. This time was no different. It was a very bumpy landing dodging rainstorms.

On the way to the airport, I get the same six phone calls from the inept Delta system telling me that my flight has changed. This time the leg from Salt Lake to San Francisco was delayed. That was in a put me into San Francisco at about midnight. when wandering around the airport. I did see this plane that was actually pretty cool!

We again had rainstorms trolling around the Denver airport but once airborne things generally smoothed out. One of the things I miss, living in California is true fluffy white clouds.

I don’t usually take a window seat but since I had it, I figured I’d play around a bit. One of the tough things about taking photographs in planes is the windows are usually dirty. Sometimes you’ll get lucky where the camera’s focus doesn’t pick up the dirt but often times you’ll see spots over your photos. Some of these were better than others but I don’t think I got many perfectly clear photos. I’m too lazy to manually extract the artifacts in the photos with Photoshop.

Landing in Salt Lake was pretty cool. We had great visibility to the ground and the mountains around made for a very scenic landing.

I’m not exactly sure when I can use the camera and when I can’t. I figured since we had just touched the ground, I could take pictures since cell phones were allowed.

The sunset over the airport was quite beautiful. Her traffic control had a great sky behind it.

Once walking around the airport, the sun and clouds gave one last burst of color.I took this photo a few times at different exposures. I realized in the first set I had the fluorescent lights from the airport reflecting off of the glass and therefore being picked up in my photo. I turned the camera down a little bit to eliminate the lights in the photo and took a second set. 🙂

They finally called us to board about 90 minutes after we were supposed to take off. We all board the plane like lemmings and take our seats. The pilot tells us the plane needs gas. Why did they put us on the plane if it doesn’t have gas? Must have been for this view!