Bowling for Tumbleweeds and Other Adventures in and Around Denver International Airport

I need a massage.  I don't mean some-little-back-rub-by-one-of-the-kids massage.  I mean Broadmoor or Bust massage!!  Oil, soothing music, quiet and relaxing.  A real massage.

Why?

I just got back from the airport.

Oh, I know that is a simple feat for some of you out there, but for me it was....well....challenging today!

I hate airports anyway.  They involve airplanes.  And I REALLY hate airplanes!  Well, not to look at.  But, if it involves me getting on one...I hate them!  Hate, hate, hate them!  And most people hate it when I am on one with them.  So....there is no love lost between me and DIA in the first place.  But, I digress....

If it had just been the airport, that would have been bad enough.  But the whole airport escapade just added to it!

Join me, won't you, as I reminisce about my day to and from and at the airport.

The first obstacle this morning to my trip to the airport was my kids.  My boys live and breathe for planes, trains and automobiles!  I think my husband will not be able to take them when he drops us off at the train station in June when Joss and I leave for Virginia.  I predict much wailing and gnashing of teeth as they realize they don't get to get on the train!  So, you can imagine how badly they wanted to accompany me to the airport today.  Maybe my guilt got regarding the impending train trip without them got the better of me, because I cannot imagine why in the world I agreed to take them with me.  Gecko, Carli and Jocelyn were just there last night to pick up Catey.  But, here it was a whole 12 hours after Catey had gotten home, I was tired and my guilt was weighing me down so I agreed that Carli, Gecko and Sam could accompany me while I took Catey and Jocelyn to the airport.  This agreement, of course, means that I have half an hour less to get ready because that is how much extra time you have to add your schedule when it now includes the catching, hog tying, shoe tying and bottom wiping of two squirrely boys! (okay...only Sam needed the bottom wiping...but it still adds time to the schedule!).  But....we made pretty good timing and were able to plop them in the car, buckle up, cram the luggage and take off without forgetting anyone.  Whew!

As an added measure of "fun", today we had high wind advisories.  And with that, we had an extremely HEAVY migration of....TUMBLEWEEDS!  I thought those things were only in Arizona and bad western movies...or on Shannon's dinner plate!  I don't know why, when Shannon told me she eats tumbleweed, I thought it was so odd.  Once you see them on the highway and hit several dozen of them, they do sort of appear as vegetative roadkill.  The way they run across the highway and jump at your windshield, trying wildly to get into your car, really makes them seem as though they are alive.....and as if they are a vicious thing to be hunted!  At some points near the airport, where the wind was really kicking up, the herds of tumbleweeds were so thick, I couldn't see the road!  There was no swerving.....I just had to run them over and keep going. I hope someone called animal control.

As I neared the exit for the airport, the tumbleweeds, thankfully, dissipated and I had a sense that the worst was over.  Alas...I should have known better.  How could I think I would have an easy go of things at an airport that looks like a giant circus tent,  guarded by a three story, rearing, blue horse with glowing orange eyes?  What was I thinking?

Cy had told me this morning that I should park in short term parking.  Two dollars more an hour, but you are "right in and right out".  At this point in my post, I find the need to write a letter.  Bear with me.

Dear City of Denver, and Airport Sign Making and Posting Personnel,
I would like to apply for a job as a sign maker and sign poster for your airport.  It is clear you need no college experience, because...well, it is clear you don't need a brain.  I certainly am over qualified in that case, as I do have a brain and mine works, but perhaps you will consider me for the job anyway.
Sincerely,
Jill Yuen

If you were putting up a sign for parking, wouldn't you include directions for ALL parking?  And if you put up signs for parking, wouldn't you make sure ALL your parking options were listed on signs before a fork in the road?  Before you think there is only one parking exit option?  I would.  I definitely would.  I wouldn't make people look at one sign for parking and make the assumption that there is only one parking exit and then list another parking option on another sign way past the first parking exit option.  A sign that cannot be seen from the first parking sign that leads them to believe this is the only parking sign and only parking exit option.  Nope, I wouldn't do it that way!  But DIA apparently does do it that way.  But, I didn't know that.....SO....

I took the only exit you can see when parking options are listed.  (silly me, I didn't know you had to progress to "Arrivals" to see on that sign that there is ANOTHER parking option).  I got the little ticket and traveled past the completely packed Economy Lot and began looking for the Short Term Parking that my husband told me to look for and my 11 year old told me was the way I was going.  (short note here....in my family, you are either a Lichty or a Yuen.  Which gene pool you swim in is determined by your sense of direction.  For example, Catey is a Yuen:  she could not find her way out of a paper bag.  She takes after her dad, WW (Wrong Way) Yuen.  Jocelyn could get you from Colorado to California without looking at a map...she is a Lichty.  Unfortunately, Carli's gene preference had not been made known to us before today....but let me tell you most assuredly...she is a Yuen!).  So, I began to hope against hope that even though ALL the signs for the garage said FULL, there would be someone leaving.  I drove and drove and drove.  Thousands of cars and NO ONE was leaving!  I drove and drove and drove some more.  Somehow, I navigated myself out of the garage....but I realized I was going to have to go through the exit and pay to get out of this section of the airport.  I called my husband, who told me to just tell the exit operators that I made a mistake and just let me out so I can go to short term parking, which my husband just told me is actually gotten to by taking the "Arrivals" exit.  But, I am concentrating so hard on what he is telling me and marveling at the fact that there was another parking option, but it wasn't on the Parking sign that I made a wrong turn and ended up in an "Authorized Vehicle Only" area!!  At this point I am stuck behind an automatic gate that only automatically opens if you are authorized, which I am not.  Oh yeah, and there is a bus behind me.  So, I have to push the red button that matches the shade of my face color on the gate call box and tell them, "Hi.  I am applying for a job here at the airport as a sign maker and sign poster and to prove that I have no brain so that I can get said job, I am now stuck where I do not belong with a bus blocking me."  After 30 seconds of hysterical laughing between the gate operator and the bus, the bus finally backed up and so did I. I decided my husband's idea of telling the exit gate operators I made a mistake and just needed to get to Short Term parking was my only option.  When I got to the gate and told the lady, she told me that was fine, and to take the "Arrivals" exit (seriously....if everyone is willing to tell you  to take the Arrivals exit...why don't they write that on the stupid Parking sign????).....and that she had to charge me for my joy ride through the parking garage.  I hate the airport.

SO....I paid my money and got back around to approaching the airport.  I finally took the "Arrivals" exit and found Short Term Parking very easily.  Parked, piled kids and baggage out of the car and proceeded to the terminal.

By this point, I had to use the bathroom so badly, I left the girls to check in on their own.  But, nothing about today was easy.  Especially because I was at the airport.  Of course, the boys had to go to the bathroom, too.  Carli and I took them with us.  I chose to take Gecko, because usually he is the easier of the two for me to manage and I didn't want to have an accident and wet my pants while dealing with Sam.  Gecko, however, had to go as bad as I did....a fact he did not tell me til we were in the bathroom.  Excruciating, that's what is was.  And that is all I have to say about that.

Once I made it out of the bathroom, the big girls were all checked in and ready to say good-bye and head down to security.  We hugged. We kissed.  We waved good-bye.  And then the three younger kids and I stood upstairs, watching the girls make their way to security.  I wanted to keep an eye on them because my younger daughter has no ID and I wanted to make sure it wasn't an issue.  She got right through.  Ahhhh...at last - something easy.  Or so I thought.

After my daughters got halfway undressed and went through the metal detectors, a security guard directed them to an "agent designated special security area" (benches at the end of the security conveyor belts).  Oh no.  Now what? They were talking to my daughter who does not have ID....the fourteen year old who hates confrontation.  The guard seemed nice enough, but it is obvious there is some sort of issue and the girls remained detained.  The guard monkeyed around with my kid's stuff some more and then sent them both on their way.  The girls turned and waved and blew kisses with giant smiles on their faces.  I was yelling, "what happened?" over and over, but they just smiled and waved and disappeared into the train tunnel!

Later the girls called me as they were boarding the plane.  They told me they were detained because Jocelyn had an AWANA pocketknife in her bag!!!  I think after my foray into the "Authorized Vehicles Only" section of the parking lot and Jocelyn's weapon stash, they heightened the security advisory to Red (SEVERE).

On the way home, matters only got worse.  I was in a tumbleweed blizzard!!!!  I had tumbleweed stragglers that refused to let go of my car!  My kids were hungry, so I stopped in Parker to take them to McDonald's.  Anyone know the McDonald's in Parker?  Yeah...you know how you get to it?  By getting on a ROUNDABOUT!!!  That is when I started crying.

Anyway.....I am pretty sure they won't let me back on airport property.  Even to pick up my knife-wielding delinquent minor.

So....who wants to pick them up?  They will be back next Wednesday and I will be somewhere getting a massage.  Just let me know.  And remember...

Take the "Arrivals" exit.