Out of Utah

Arrived in from Utah late last night; and what an adventure we had!  Skiing was incredible and all of us emerged unscathed (though I had an extremely close call that involved a high-speed crash and two broken skis).  The mountains and the snow were fantastic and overall the experience was superb, but I must admit that Utah feels like a foreign country to me.  I keep eyeing people and wondering if they’re Mormons, and if they are Mormons how they can actually believe and practice Mormonism.  They have this bank chain called Zions Bank.  The name kind of bothers me in a cultish apocalyptic sort of way.  Would you bank at an institution called “City if God” Bank?  Of course not, you’d be worried you’d have to sign you checks with blood and that your savings would be frozen if you committed an unpardonable sin (such as not tithing at least 10% of your income, you infidel).

However, the people I did talk to were nice, and I was glad to see them drink beer and use profanity as it made me less sure that they believed in a power-and-sex-hungry huckster named Joseph Smith (speaking of beer, this is probably an appropriate place to note that I had a delicious dark libation called “Polygamy Porter” from the esteemed local Wasatch Brewery).

Naturally there was plenty of adventure on the slopes, but the airport, surprisingly, was just as eventful (if much less thrilling).  We were supposed to connect through Chicago on our way home, but the negative temperatures in Chi-town were putting a major stopper on flights–for a little bit it looked like we may get stuck somewhere.  Fortunately we managed to get on a flight to Dallas, a city that was about 80 degrees warmer than Chicago.  Dallas had its own series of adventures as our final flight to Columbus was “overweight” (Britt placed the blame on several morbidly obese passengers–she swears the “overweight” announcement by the boarding crew was in direct response to the hefty living cargo that shuffled on board).  The boarding crew placed a call for volunteers who, in exchange for some substantial travel vouchers, would take a later flight to Columbus.  We snapped up the bait (cheap vacation later this year?).  After having a bite to eat we embarked for our new departure gate, but were foiled at first because a “security breach” had shut down the entire terminal we were heading to.

By the way, one sees the most outrageous characters at airports.  I saw some middle aged demure-looking business woman sprint through a crowded terminal right up to the boarding area I was at.  She skidded to a stop at the agent desk and burst out between heavy wheezes that she was “platinum” and could they call such and such a gate and hold the plane, then she gathered her bags and sprinted off again–in the wrong direction!  Only a shout from the agent made her about face and huff off towards the correct gate.  Another woman kept giving some SOB story about her husband being in the hospital and could she PLEASE get on the plane, even though she didn’t have a ticket.  Lesson learned?  No matter how deplorable your situation is being annoying will not get you any sympathy in an airport.  Anyway, back to the main story:

I guess the security breach was closed, because we eventually made it to our gate, boarded the aircraft and took off for Columbus.  We landed and rode a shuttle to our car, which was under 4 inches of fresh snow, and drove slowly home.  I went up to our front door at 12:20am and found out that the our lock had frozen in the “locked” position.  25 minutes later the emergency night repair guy showed up with some kind of blowtorch and unthawed our door.  We got in, but in the process of finagling the door open I managed to break off the outside doorknob.

Left for work this morning and couldn’t even lock the door, went home for lunch and couldn’t get in (doorknob completely ruined).  Everything is supposed to be fixed by tonight. 

Really, I feel like I ought to write a chapter about each experience above, but the 4.5 hours of sleep I got last night is putting a damper on that. 

I hope you all had a good weekend.