26 Hrs To Fly To Indy…

I’m here finally, but it was a travel nightmare.  Leaving CO Springs to catch my connection in Denver took 6 hours due to weather.  Once in Denver, at midnight, I saw more people than I’ve ever seen at midnight in an airport…actually more people than I’ve ever seen in anywhere.  Denver airport was basically shut down not taking flights IN or OUT for about 6 hours. My connecting flight was still there, but they left me by 4 minutes. I even ran through the airport to get there and they still left me. What’s 4 minutes when you’ve waited 4 hrs?   After waiting at 3 separate counters to find out what I could do, the lady at the counter said, “I can’t do this anymore, I have to take a 10 minute break,” and she walked away. I was pretty much calm up until that point .  It was her job to suck it up and just help people.  I even managed to smile at her before asking her question, knowing that I had to race the next night and it was now 1am in the morning.

I eventually found someone who could help. She told me not to wait for my luggage (because it could take 2-4 hrs) but to go find a hotel and go sleep. I was put on the next flight out to Indy (9am the next day).   Well, should I even mention how  all the hotels were booked?   How I walked around in the storm  to go find a vacant hotel and that the one hotel I had made reservations with didn’t have a shuttle for 45 minutes forcing me to look elsewhere?  I finally went to sleep at 3am.

That night I had nightmares of two United flight attendants I graciously allowed to stay in my hotel room since everything was booked (we all had the same flight out in the morning).  When I woke up in the morning, they were gone and I had missed my flight!  I literally woke up swearing and thought my dream was real!  HAHA, but it wasn’t really funny.

The next day, my flight was delayed again. I got to Indy at 5pm, my race was at 9:30.  So I was trying to relax and get myself together to just go and race anyway…hoping I wouldn’t get a major ass whooping, but as I was getting up to go the weather must of followed me from Colorado.  A huge thunderstorm swept in and I thought there was NO WAY they would have the meet and finally I just said “The Hell With This.”   They had the meet.   I saw it on Flowtrack, but it was at 2am!  I would of just crumbled if I had to wait around for hours as tired as I already was.

So I race again on Wednesday.  All is not lost.  I feel almost normal again today, but need to sleep hard again tonight. I will do a hard 600m tomorrow in the AM on the track.

My mother said, “it’s just not fun to travel like it use to be.”   ….Fun? It’s not even tolerable!