2012/12/21 Friday: Traveled to SLC

I have never seen so many people at the airport, or any airport.  This doesn't even show the first half of the line.  The line went behind the baggage counters, down a hallway the length of the airport, and back and then wove through the path pictured.  Amazing, it took only about an hour.  We had shown up 2.5 hours early, so we were in good shape.
We had two Christmas miracles though.  The day before, I realized I had made a mistake with a ticket. It was a big mistake.  Henry didn't actually have a seat on our flight.  He had a kind of voucher for a seat, but I hadn't converted it into an actual seat (but I thought I had) and now there were no seats available.  In  looking how to get to Utah, if Henry couldn't get on our flight he and I would have to come two days later on very pricey tickets.  Nick and Gigi would have stayed on our scheduled flight.  Nearly every flight was sold out between now and Christmas, no doubt helped by the big storms back East.  I looked for a ticket on Friday's flight all through the day, constantly clicking refresh.  We had an elaborate plan to try and fly standby (which was why we arranged a cab that got us to the airport 2.5 hours early, so that was a blessing.)  But miracle of miracles, at 11:00 PM for a split second, a ticket opened up and I booked it.  I can't express how relieved I was.  I had made a huge mess of things, and suddenly they were fixed.
After we got through security at the airport, Nick realized his phone was missing.  He knew he'd had it with him in the cab.  I called his phone.  We called the cab company, and then thirty seconds later the cab driver called back and said "I'm out front where I dropped you off.  I have your phone."  I think when I called his phone, the passenger riding to the airport must have found it.  Nick bolted outside to get the phone.  He didn't have cash with him, so when we got to Utah we mailed the driver a nice second tip.  You could try leaving something in a cab 100 times, and it would never work out so well.  Christmas miracle. 

 

Once we got to Salt Lake, we mostly just recovered from the flight and late night and early morning.  But Jo Ellen had always wanted to photograph solstice at the temple, so I went up with her and took some pictures.