A few weeks after our trip to Minnesota my Great Grandmother passed away. She was 101 years old. How lucky our family was to have her for so long and for my kids to have been able to meet their Great Great Grandmother. It was time to head back to Fargo again to pay respects and celebrate her life and be there with my family.
Let me start by stating again that I do not enjoy flying and 2 weeks is not enough downtime for me in between flights. I had a terrible time getting my bereavement ticket through United Airlines. I have always gone through them and had no issues and they used to offer at least 40% off tickets. Well, tickets to Fargo have skyrocketed and a round trip flight from Denver to Fargo with only one day notice was around $980. You can imagine my shock. I thought, well that is alright because I will get half off for the bereavement rate. The guy on the phone came back on and said - would you like to book that ticket then for $899.00? I said, Excuse me? He then told me the bereavement rate was only 10% off for United Airlines and proceeded to argue with me about what the bereavement rate used to be. He finally did admit that it probably was 40 to 50% off until the merger and now it was only 10% off. I then made him go through all the outgoing flights the next day and the return flights for my return trip home and how many seats were left on each flight. I then told him, Thank you, I will now go and get my ticket elsewhere and I did. I jumped onto Priceline.com and made them an offer of $400 for any flights and on my dates and credit card and hit "OK". I basically knew which flights I would be getting based on the what United told me and the seat availability for each flight. Priceline came back and said they would book me for $468.00 and it was a done deal and I got the same flights I was looking for through United Airlines. Not a good way to start my trip. I was so full of adrenaline at this point it was making it hard to concentrate at work and I still had to go home and pack quick and head straight to the airport. My flight was to arrive that night at 11:30pm. I then secured a ride. I was a little bit of a nervous mess and went home and packed. Said good-bye to everyone and headed back to the airport. My car now knows its way there since being there multiple times that month. I checked in, checked my bag and headed for the Smoker's Lounge for a nice bacardi limon. I ended up having 2. I boarded the plane and I think I was definitely feeling the two drinks I had because she made them strong. I was attempting to read my book I brought with and act like a normal person during take-off, but as we taxied out the plane abruptly stopped and the pilot got on and said they had to check some circuit board or something. That was enough for me, time to freak out. I couldn't read my book anymore at this point and then out of nowhere the plane starts moving and the pilot says they restarted something and we were good to go and poof we were gone. I am freaking out at this point - What! You can't just restart something and now its good. I finally fell asleep, but there was some turbulence during the flight and I kept waking up or jolting up. All I could keep thinking was - yep, I pressed my luck getting back on a plane only 2 weeks after some relatively good flights and I'm going to be in hell now. As we started our landing into Fargo I woke up and was glancing across the way out the other guys window briefly (I couldn't open my own, too scared) and of course then the pilot decides to take a sharp downward turn. Here we go again - freak out # 2. I am clutching my seat and my necklace at this point, but at least I wasn't screaming, out loud anyways! At the same time that we have a little more turbulence and I am already freaking out from looking out the window the landing gear opens and I must have been sitting right on top of because I felt a jolt and just about lost my shit. Then we are close to the ground and I look out the guys window again and we are coming in and I can see the plane going from right to left with the wings - what the hell, pull it together buddy - straight is best, not wobbly and all over! We finally land and I really don't know if I looked at the guy across from me or if he said something to me, but I just said to him - I need to get off of here, now, really I just need off, I need off of here. He probably thought I was insane. I went and got my bags and went outside to wait for my ride. Thank goodness that was done, but I was a slight wreck after the flight.
My cousin Jamie and my aunt Shelly picked me up at the airport. We gave hugs and headed to drop Shelly off at home. It was almost midnight. Jamie and I headed to my brothers house and picked him up. I needed to go somewhere and get a beer and attempt to calm down. We found an old hang out we used to go to and the place had 2 to 4 other people in the bar. We played a game of darts and then I talked the guys into playing bar jenga. They hadn't played before so we took a bunch of pictures and had a good time with it and it was now their new favorite thing! Off to bed when we went back to Jamie's house.
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| Jeffrey |
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| Jamie |
Side note of the night: Jeff at the bar finally looked at me and said - Is that what you wore on the plane? Well, yeah Jeffrey, I did, what's wrong with it? He said I was a tad dressed up to be traveling. I should have been in sweats and a t-shirt. I told him that is what I will look like on my way home because I'm going to be so tired.
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