Phoenix bound - Volume 2

Wednesday, February 2, 2005

I was up by 5:15 am, doing some last minute baggage rearranging before showering. Check out was at 6:20 am & the desk clerk was very helpful in directing me to a business that offers 24-hour monitoring of their long-term parking lot. The charge per day was only $.50 higher than the airport's non-monitored lot so I thought it was a good deal! The shuttle picked me up immediately upon finding a parking space & I was at the airport by 6:40 am. Check-in was very quick & I made it through all of my security checkpoints just ahead of three busloads of high school students. Thank goodness!

The security check to go into my gate area was very interesting. (I haven't flown in nearly 11 years -- it's very different!) I had to put everything in a plastic tub for screening - coat, purse, shoes and they even asked for my scarf! My scarf! That was rather puzzling but they were more than welcome to scan it if they wanted. I got through without a hitch and moved into the waiting area to twiddle my thumbs for over an hour. I was there at 7:00 am and we weren't boarding until 8:20. Not a problem however. I pulled out a book I'm trying to finish ready and made quite a dent in it.

Finally it was time to board for take-off. I'm in seat 3F by the fusilage and very close to the front. I had managed to snag the window seat (I didn't care if it was officially mine or not) and sat back to enjoy the show. Have I mentioned how beautiful the Iowa fields appear when you're in the air? The way the harvested rows of last year's crops poke through the snow looked like rough paint strokes on a canvas. So many directions! As we gained altitude the fine details disappeared and the myriad network of roads & land contour looked like the fine channels insects leave on bone and wood, almost blending in but enough different to be noticeable. All features eventually disappeared as we went through the clouds. What a view! Who knew the sun was shining in Iowa?? lol A sea of white hills as far as the eye could see was before me with a sky of the purest blue above. Wow. Occasional breaks in the clouds continued to show land far below, but at our elevation only major land features were visible.

Our landing in Denver was very smooth. As we descended, I was surprised to see all of the golden-colored crop circles spread out over the countryside. I didn't realize that Colorado had an agricultural base. What I found most odd was how two fields next to each other had crop circles. Why not use the entire field, which was a square. It was very bizarre. Maybe on my way home I'll find a Colorado-native and can ask about that. We pulled into Concourse B & I had to find my next gate on the display panels, which ended up being A40. The Denver airport is HUGE & is newly built (moved from Downtown). The length of the Concourse is divided into sections - food court, then gates with flat escalators in the middle. I finally realized my legs would be saved quite a bit of walking if I used the escalators and quickly moved into a ground-eating pace. I headed in the direction of descending gate numbers, assuming that as I left the B's, the A's would appear. WRONG! I finally found a map of the airport and discovered that there are three Concourses and each are housed in a different building, which meant I had to go to the center of Concourse B and go to the lower level in order to catch an underground train to Concourse A. Thank goodness I had a two-hour layover! I took awhile to figure all of that out. I reached Concourse A and then went on the search for lunch food. Now, I had forgotten about the time change and while my stomach was ready for lunch, it wasn't even 10:30 in Denver so all of the stalls were still selling breakfast. *sigh* I finally found a small snack shack that had pizza on a turntable so that's what I grabbed for lunch. I didn't even care that it was so greasy it was dripping. It wasn't breakfast fare and that's what counted. I took my pizza & soda back to my gate waiting area. We only had about 30 minutes until boarding. At 10 minutes before boarding, the desk clerk asked passengers to consider waitint for the 3:00 flight because they were overbooked. In exchange the passenger would get a free round-trip ticket for anywhere in the continental US. I considered briefly and said "no way". I didn't want to wait in the airport for another four hours. Forget it!

Our next take off was pretty smooth. I had to check my carry-on because the storage compartments were already full. Oh well! As long as it goes there... The scenery in Denver is quite stunning. The Colorado mountains were snow-capped peaks on a backdrop of blue sky. We even flew over Pike's Peak on our way to Phoenix. Funny....it didn't look that tall. I spent most of the flight napping. I'd wake up with every bump of turbulence through, especially the last one as we turned to begin our descent into Phoenix. It was a pretty hard couple of bumps and woke up clutching my planner and inhaling on a gasp of fear. I looked out the window expecting to see the ground rushing up to meet us, but all was fine. I can't seem to get the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" out of my head. Two planes went down in that movie because of turbulence. lol Unlike Denver, the mountains of Arizona are quite stark but beautiful in a primitive way. Whereas Denver had almost black looking mountains (with the snowy tops), Arizona's mountains are a series of reds, oranges and browns. They were quite extensive and as we descended I could see the valleys and small bodies of water dispersed throughout the landscape. I could see the furthest outreaches of Phoenix in a very large valley and as we continued toward the airport, it really became clear how large the city was. Wow. No wonder it's called the fastest growing city in the US. It's HUGE! We had another super-smooth landing and I quickly headed out to find baggage claim. Becky and Mikey met me there and soon we were on our way through the big city of Phoenix.

There are palm trees! I thought they were pulling my leg, but it's true! I'll have to take a picture of one later. We drove over to Amber's where I met Wasabi, the Princess of the Tufted-Paw Kingdom (I hope I got that right). She's a Persian and is adorable. Very purry. I made friends with Armani (Becky's male kitty) but Roxy (female) is still trying to make up her mind about me. Maybe in a few more days.

We later met up with Justin and went to happy hour an Manuel's, which is a Mexican restaurant/karoake bar. I haven't laughed that much in a very long time. We had a great time! We were back at Becky's place around 9:00 and did a few tarot readings before decided to hit the sack. Becky and I ended up staying up even later though because we started yacking. lol