New York - Part 1

We got back from our family trip to New York last week. Since there are way too many things to talk about in one post, I am going to do a series of posts. Part 1 was probably the most exciting of the whole trip- the airport. Now, I realize that sounds pretty lame and boring, but here you will see that it was quite the opposite.


Our day of traveling was to begin Wednesday morning. Tracy, Jon, Kate and I were to fly from Salt Lake to Las Vegas where we would meet up with the whole family for the rest of our flights to New York. Our flight out of Salt Lake left at 8:30 am so Kate and I stayed with Tracy and Jon the night before- they live 10 minutes from the airport. We headed out Wednesday morning and after a few delays, made it to the check-in area with only 50 minutes before departure. After spending a while trying to figure out how to print out our own boarding passes, we talked to an airline agent who informed us that you have to check your baggage at least one hour before departure. An executive decision was made and we flung open our luggage and began furiously shoving the most necessary items into our carry ons.
Now, what to do with the half-empty luggage? Take it back to the car of course! So Tracy and Kate took our carry on bags and headed to the security line while Jon and I sprinted to the parking lot with our luggage. We found an escalator that would take us up to our parking level and made our way up it.


I made it about 3/4 of the way up the escalator when I glanced back at my luggage and noticed that it was open and empty. The contents were very evenly distributed along the entire length of the escalator. About to go into shock, I handed Jon the other bag I was carrying and collected my soiled clothes as quickly as possible, shoved them back into my luggage, and closed the latches- or so I thought. Only a few seconds later, in the middle of the parking lot crosswalk, in front of a car and several other people calmly making their way to the check-in area, my luggage opened again. Since I was running as fast as I could, the distribution of my clothing was again fairly even along the crosswalk. Sweating and gasping for breath, I again collected my clothing, stuffed them into my luggage- this time picking it up and holding it closed. Sprinting to the car we shoved our luggage in the trunk and I almost gagged. I was breathing so hard and the air quality-with the wildfires going-was so poor, that I started to dry heave. Not very fun.

All this time, Kate was calling my phone. She must have called 4 or 5 times in the space of a few minutes trying to tell me that the security line was so backed up that we would never get through it in time. We now had 20 minutes until departure and the line almost reached the parking lot. We resigned ourselves to the fate of murder at the hand of our mother/mother-in-law when she found out that we missed our flight. We did eventually make it to New York.