Crossroads
It's good to be back in Indiana. New job, old friends. Living in the city rocks.
Getting to Indiana was bad.
No direct flights from San Jose, so we flew through Denver. A two and a half long layover would be rough, but it would give the cats a chance to stretch their legs in an animal relief room. And Denver isn't so bad as airports go. Decent food options, and it wouldn't be busy on a random Wednesday.
But wow, is Denver windy.
It was when we were circling for longer than usual that I started realizing there might be an issue. We actually made one attempt at a runway but pulled up while still a few thousand feet up. As it turned out, wind shear at ground level was grounding all flights out and preventing any flights from landing.
The captain, with an apologetic tone, told us we were running out of fuel and would divert to a nowheresville airport in Nebraska to refuel and wait for the wind to calm down. It took about two hours. By the time we made it back to Denver, our connecting flight to Indy had just left.
So now we have two nauseated cats, and one nauseated Lucas, from the turbulance. No flights to Indy until the next morning. And a customer service line that wound through the whole airport, since everyone else had missed their connections too. But I managed to get ahold of an agent using the fancy iMessage customer service thingy, and proposed an option to him: we flew to Chicago.
The in-laws let us stay at their place in the Chicagoland area for the night. Taylor drove all the way up from Indy and picked us up the next morning. Hailey let us borrow pillows and blankets. Taylor helped me retrieve our luggage, some of which had made it as far as Montana, that had eventually been delivered to the Indy airport a day later. Then he let us borrow some plates and bowls and stuff as we wait for our household stuff to be delivered. We were tired, but we made it.
We had a very bad time getting here. But that experience reminded me of one of the biggest reasons I wanted to be in Indy: the people. There are good people here. I've missed them very badly.