The trip to Colorado

The trip out to Colorado was quite the saga. We scheduled our closing for Tuesday afternoon, so I booked a morning flight. My cab arrived a bit early, and I left around 4:10 am. Miracle of miracles: I was checked in and at the gate by 4:45. My 6 am flight was delayed a bit due to de-icing. I passed out and woke up over Texas. Dallas was fogged in, so we circled for about an hour. We then ran low on fuel which caused a diversion to Tulsa to top off. We landed and refueled. At this time, I’m not sure what’s going on with my connecting flight to Colorado. Each minute that passes is a minute off my layover. About another hour passes, and the captain announces that we have to wait for more fuel. I’m trying (but not totally succeeding) to not freak out. By the time he declares us ready to leave, my connecting flight should have left. Instead of arriving at 8:30 – 9 am, we land at 12:10 pm.

According to the flight status on my phone, my connection has been delayed but is now leaving in 30 minutes. I haul ass across DFW to find that my flight has been totally cancelled. Luckily, American bumps all of us to the next Colorado Springs flight that is supposed to leave at 1:15. When 1:15 rolls around, our flight crew is at the gate, but we don’t have a plane. Two other flights are scheduled to depart from the same gate within 30 minutes. The Des Moines flight lands, but the crew has not arrived. Our flight is delayed again. Finally around 2:30, our plane arrives at another gate, so everyone literally runs to the new gate. I happen across a couple also traveling from DC to the Springs who left DC after me and yet managed to arrive in Dallas before me. Before we board, I call my Realtor to tell him that I will be late to closing. Once on the plane, we have to wait for fuel. We finally take off around 3 pm. Obviously, I’m not going to be on time to buy my house.

Keep in mind that my whole plan for the day involved going to the bank to wire our down payment to the title company. The bank that closes at 5 pm. We land in Colorado Springs at 4:54 pm. I have given up all hope of making the bank and being able to close. But the real miracle of miracles: since we requested a 4 pm close, our closing agent works after hours and can meet us at 7 pm. I am genuinely on the verge of tears when Bob tells me this. I probably would have had a nervous breakdown had anything else gone wrong. And thankfully, the closing agent is fine with us closing without the wire deposit because we were already after bank hours. I dropped the check off first thing Wednesday morning, and we own a house!

This was just one of the those trips where stuff didn’t go right. I have to commend the crews and the airport staff from American. They couldn’t help the weather, but they were still as helpful as they could possibly have been.