The things I go through to see my folks on the Holidays

It's one of the little ironies of life that Airports are among the least pleasant places on earth to be stranded, and the places where you're most likely to actually be stranded.

I flew into Denver, intent upon flying from there to Durango, Colorado; where my family was waiting for me. My flight into Denver was delayed by three hours, which in and of itself was not a problem, except that my flight to Durango had left an hour before my flight to Denver landed.

The fact that I arrived at the gate almost two hours after my flight was supposed to leave, and it still hadn't left, should tell you something.

Of the six flights to leave for Durango, three had failed to depart, three more remained to leave, the first of which was four hours behind schedule (and counting) and two hundred very angry people were waiting by the gate. Combined, all three flights to Durango could carry approximately 75 passengers. They were in the process of booting people off of the three remaining flights to make room for the three flights which had failed to depart. And I was arriving late in the game.

This did not look promising. I had a confirmed ticket, but as I was rapidly learning, that wasn't in any way, form, or fashion a guarantee that I would be leaving Denver within the week. The next confirmed flight to Durango was on the 28th. April was planning to meet me in Durango after Christmas, and at the rate I was moving, she'd beat me there.

Don't worry; this story does become more positive. You know me; I'm Mr. Positive himself.

But at that moment, things were looking a little bleak. I called ahead and told my folks to start a pool on whether or not I was going to make it to Durango in time for Christmas, and to put my money on the 27th.

Life has this nasty habit of taking you in directions you never expect it to. If you had told me on the morning of the 23rd, that I'd be renting a car with three complete strangers to take an unplanned seven-hour road trip through the wolf creek pass to spend Christmas with my family, I'd probably have said that you were fricking nuts. But lo and behold, in the midst of the chaos that was Gate B61 at the Denver International Airport, four complete strangers finally said, "screw this, we're gettin' home for Christmas."

But I digress.

My brother happened to travelling on the same day, and he had a confirmed ticket to Cortez. So he was gonna make it home in time (lucky bastard). At the moment, it didn't look like I was. He asked me what my plan was. I was on standby for the next two flights; I was also on standby for the flight to Cortez. Plan C was to rent a car and drive.

That's when I met Carla.

Carla was a 38-year-old writer from San Francisco who had been waiting at the gate since about 11:00 that morning. She was flying to Durango to spend Christmas with the closest thing she had to family; a friend who lived in Pagosa Springs; a town about an hour out of Durango. She couldn't help but overhear me mentioning to my elder brother that driving to Durango may end up being my only viable option, and offered on the spot to split the cost of a car with me. I think we were both hanging onto the desperate hope that maybe, just maybe we could get out of there before the week was over.

That hope seemed only slightly less desperate when we found out that they were finally going to get a plane which could potentially fly to Durango.

That hope was dashed when the pilot grounded the plane. Normally, I suppose I'd be happy about that; but normally, I haven't just spent four hours trying to get onto a plane that I already had a ticket to get onto, at least in theory. But at 6:00 pm, three and a half hours after the plane theoretically should've left, thirteen hours more than some of the people waiting at the gate should've been waiting, we were informed that the absolute earliest that we'd get out of the airport was 8:55 pm; and even then, the odds were that we would be waiting at least until tomorrow. Maybe later.

Carla and I took one look at each other and pretty much decided on the spot that we were driving.

We decided to divide our efforts. Carla made sure that our bags got on the plane (ironically, they were going to reach Durango before we did), I was going to get a car.

First, though, I was going to try one last hail mary pass.

I walked to the gate for the last flight to Cortez to see if I could get my butt onto the last flight, leaving at 9:05 pm.

No dice.

I was walking back from the concourse that time forgot, Carla called me to let me know that she'd got another passenger for the car.

That's how I met Jeremy. Jeremy was a 22-year-old undergrad in commerce at Colorado State University, just trying to get home in time for Christmas. He'd been seeing a young woman for almost six years and was planning to upgrade that status to "Fiancee" in the near future.

So the three of us (happily) left the airport, and one by one, checked each of the car rental counters to see who would rent us a car for a one-way transit to Durango.

The fact that this was a seven-hour drive we were signing up for (it was now approaching 8:00 pm) was not lost on us; but at least it beat waiting at the gate for a plane to show up.

And that's when I met Sydney. Sydney had been trying to get out of New York for three days, and had found that to be somewhat difficult with the transit strike. She'd arrived at the airport at 8:00 that morning. She was coming upon hour twelve in the airport. The way she put it, she'd run into Jeremy in front of the gate, who'd mentioned that we were renting a car. She'd basically said that she was still going to try to get onto the next plane.

That was around about the same time that the pilot announced that he was going to ground the plane. Faced with the prospect of having to wait until at least 8:55 before she even had the remotest chance to get out of the airport exclaimed to the young woman behind the desk "Oh (expletive deleted), I'm such an idiot! What's that guy's name!?"

The woman behind the desk, understandably, didn't understand what the hell she was talking about. Her confusion deepened when Sydney leaned across the desk, and, fueled by the frustration of getting the hell out of New York; followed by twelve hours waiting to get on a plane; demanded to know where we would most likely go in the airport if we wanted to rent a car. That's when she met us and asked us, pleaded, really, if there was still room for one more in the car.

Sydney had had a rough day.

She high-tailed it out of the building to meet the three of us, just as we managed, for the bargain price of $200 US, to rent a car to get to Durango. Split four ways, and seen as an investment in our future sanity, we decided that it was a bargain.

So we piled the four of us into a Ford Five Hundred; and headed south.

It was a rather impressive encounter by anybody's standards. We took turns driving; which means that each of us would drive for about two hours at the most. Two of us could sleep; and the other would stay awake to keep the driver alert.

That was the theory, but it didn't end up working out that way. All of us were pretty wired; well, except for Sydney, who was just bushed. The rest of us were up basically trading life stories.

Consider this for a moment. The four of us had met barely hours ago, and now we were embarking on an intense, seven-hour drive to Durango. Four complete strangers unified by a desire to spend the holidays somewhere other than the Denver International Airport. And here we were, trading pretty much the stories of our respective lives.

I mentioned earlier that Carla was a writer. From her perspective, this was gravy. This was the kind of material that makes books. So fueled by her insatiable hunger for information, the four of us learned more about each other than some people who have known each other for years.

So as midnight rolled around; as the 23rd turned to Christmas eve, we were weaving our way through the Wolf Creek Pass and talking as if we were life-long friends.

I spent four hours flying, I spent another four in the airport. I spent seven hours driving from Denver to Durango.

And I found out in hindsight, there was room on the flight from Denver to Cortez.

I'm glad I didn't get on that plane.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Quick Question:

This is gonna be a short post, but I'm wondering; am I the only one who sees Stephen Harper on the news and thinks to himself: "So that's what happens when you don't let gay guys touch your hair?"

When did "liberal" become a dirty word; Part II

I feel the need to clarify that I don't consider myself to be liberal. Actually, I call myself apolitical. I vote for the person who I believe best represents me (even if that happens to be nobody). In fact; I don't even vote for parties in federal elections; I try to remain as ignorant as possible of what a given party platform is, and focus upon the individual I'm voting for. That's probably part of the reason why I'd vote for my current MP, if I were actually planning to vote in the next Canadian Federal Election (which I'm not). Not because he's a member of the Conservative party; but because he's doing a decent job as MP.

For my Canadian readers, I also feel the need to specify that when I mention liberals and conservatives, I mean lower-case "l" and "c" respectively; I'm talking about the political view, and not the political party.

And finally, I feel the need to quote someone smarter than me; so I will:

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "liberal?" If by "liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "liberal." But if by a "liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "liberal."

John F. Kennedy said this in what was arguably a more enlightened time; when being labeled as a "liberal" wasn't the political kiss of death that it apparently is today.

But seriously; why is being labeled as a "liberal" such a bad thing? It's such a bad thing, apparently, that they've had to come up with a whole new name for themselves: "progressives." Liberals ended slavery in America; got women the right to vote; got African-Americans the right to vote; they gave same-sex couples the right to marry in Canada and in Massachusetts (and hopefully, coming soon to a neighborhood near you); they created medicare; they passed the Civil Rights act and the Voter's Rights act; they ended segregation.

Now, I feel the need to again clarify, I'm not a liberal; but frankly, many who eargerly label themselves as such have accomplished some pretty decent things. All of those things I listed above: they were actively blocked by conservatives.

In the interest of fairness, conservatives have also accomplished great things. Nixon ended the Vietnam war, Reagan ended the cold war, Bush (Sr.) ended Iraq's occupation of Kuwait and then did something that Bush Jr. hasn't yet figured out how to do: he went the hell home. Nobody likes to send their country to war, but at least Bush Sr. had a decent excuse for doing it.

I've had some people ask me what my political views are: my answer is pretty simple: I do what makes sense. I don't believe that "because it's always been done this way" is a good reason to keep doing it. Sometimes "the way it's always been done" is still a good way of doing things; sometimes it isn't. Either way, I don't belive that we can make decisions based upon tradition. Saying that we need to keep doing something in one particular way because that's worked in the past is, frankly, stupid. For example: I support government-sponsored daycare; something which is viewed as a typically-liberal position, provided that there is a requirement that those using the service have a job while they're using it. Frankly, I'm not gonna pay taxes so that someone out there can unload his or her kid, then sit at home and watch Oprah. But, if provide daycare service to people who are not working because they have to stay home and take care of the kids; we now have people who are making taxable revenue; thereby increasing government income, allowing the government to provide more services like government-sponsored daycare.

I like to call myself a "reasonist." I do what's reasonable; no more, no less.