I’m back, but not quite recovered from my week-long stay in Fargo. I flew out on Sunday, 9/30 and got home on Monday 10/8. While my time in Fargo was awesome and nostalgic, my attempts to get to and from Fargo were pretty helacious. Here is the breakdown of my woes.

Flight one: Seattle to Minneapolis
My flight leaves at 12;15pm. We leave the house around 10:15, figuring about 30 minutes of travel time. All is good until we get off the freeway. Then the highway is stop and not-so-much-go all the way to the airport. We probably spend half an hour slogging it to the terminal. I’m having a heart attack as I hate being late, especially for flights.

I get into the airport about 11:10 and the line to check in is so long that they have it broken into 2 sections in the terminal—there is one of those long winding lines at the counters, then another long winding line on the other side of the terminal. An NWA representative is monitoring traffic and letting people cross from one line to the other when the first line opens up enough. I really start to panic—I still have to check in, go through security, hop the train to my gate, and get on the flight—all within the hour.

After 40 minutes or so of slowly moving up the line, I get a bit of a breather that my flight has been delayed by 15 minutes. Woohoo, but it doesn’t look like I’ll still make it. After I finally make it up to the self check-in terminal and get my boarding passes, I have to wait for a good 5 minutes or so with all my papers so somebody can come over, check my id, and put the tag on my checked bag. As soon as I done I bolt for security.

Of course the line is super long (security is always slow at SeaTac). It is moving faster than the check-in line, so I finally clear security ( in about 15 minutes) and head down two floors to catch the train to the S gates.

The boarding line has formed already by the time I get there, but I do make it on my orginal flight—though I am out of breath and sweaty from running. Not a good start to my trip.

Flight two: Minneapolis to Seattle
I get to Minneapolis and have about 1 hour to make it all the way across the airport—this is pretty standard as it is always big airplanes flying from Seattle and tiny airplanes flying into Fargo and I guess NWA likes to put them as far apart as possible. J

Of course I learn I have more time as it appears my flight has been delayed an hour. I also learned that they cancelled the 2 earlier flights to Fargo, so there are tons of people trying to get on this flight. That delays things further as they start asking for volunteers to be bumped which causes more paperwork and bags to be removed from the cargo hold. Ugh…

Once on board we have to sit and wait as the airport is down to one major runway due to construction. All flights are delayed in and out to try to alleviate congestion (one guy told me he circled around the cities for 30 minutes waiting to land). I also was glad it was a short flight as the person next to me was terrified to fly and we flew through a thunderstorm. Lots of turbulence equals one very very scared neighbor. I did my best to keep her mind off the plane and kept her talking all the way to Fargo.

Flight three: Fargo to Minneapolis
We had a 6:35pm flight out on Sunday (I say we because Abi joined me in Fargo on Thursday and we went home together). About 10am on Sunday I get a phone call from a robot at NWA telling me my flight was cancelled due to “weather forecast”. We are booked on the 5:15am flight on Monday. I call bullshit. It is the midwest, you can’t accurately plan on the weather 2 hours in the future, let alone a full day. They wanted to cancel more flights to ensure a full flight and by calling it weather related they wouldn’t incur any costs from angry passengers demanding hotels and such.

We also learned by happenstance that Abi hadn’t been rebooked, so we had to make sure she got joined up with me in the system so we could fly together. I guess my business traveler profile helps on occasion. J

So at 3:00am on Monday we crawl out of bed to get packed, loaded and to get the rental car fueled and returned. We get to the airport and our flight is delayed by about 20 minutes. Once we board we sit and sit and sit. We are told it is the first flight of that plane for the day so they have to go through some extra checks and warm-ups. We finally start to taxi out and then sit at the end of the runway. I don’t know how long we sat there as both Abi and I fell asleep, but we wake up to the pilot telling us we are heading back for the gate with a no-go mechanical issue. So we have our second consecutive flight out of Fargo cancelled.

There is a flight leaving for Minneapolis at 7:00am, but we get booked on the 8:15am flight. We have breakfast at the airport, go back through security and sit around for our flight. Once on board we are told we are sitting for 30 minutes so we arrive at Minneapolis at the right time for the runway. Ugh…

Flight four: Minneapolis to Seattle
We had a nice sized layover in Minneapolis. We shopped, rode the terminal tram for fun and had an early lunch at TGIFridays. Of course our layover was extended by an hour as our flight was delayed by the time we got off the last plane. More uggh…

The only bonus of the trip is somehow our luggage managed to arrive before us. I thought we’d never see it again after it was on a plane that was cancelled. But we get up to the baggage claim to wait for the luggage to appear and it is already there—the dregs of some other flight. I’m glad Abi actually paid attention and that it went to the same baggage terminal or we would have been in a world of pissed-off hurt.

Luckily our cab ride home was stress free and on time!

But enough about my woes, let’s talk about my trip! J

I had a great time in Fargo. It was great to see people I work with in person. I got a lot of business taken care  of Monday through Thursday morning. I met up with some of my old coworkers and of course hung out with my friends from “back in the day”.

Most of my trip seemed centered on eating at places that I haven’t ate at in a long time (neraly 3 years!). that was awesome. I drank lots of Lienenkugel’s honeyweiss as it doesn’t seem to make it over the Rocky Mountains.

I was also on TV! Microsoft had a big ground breaking ceremony for 2 new buildings they are building on the Fargo campus, and I guess I was in one of the pan-and-scan-the-crowd shots. But I must have been in-focus enough for a couple of different people to see and recognize me. J

I definitely miss the closeness and sense of community that Fargo has. It seems that everyone in Seattle is heads-down, going through life focused on doing what they can to get ahead and get “things”. I know we have certainly played that game since we got out here, but it was so nice and refreshing to get back to a place where people look at and care about each other. The servers in restaraunts, people walking downtown, co-workers and friends all seem genuinely glad you are there. Abi and I concluded we wouldn’t mind at all to move back if the situation came up…

Of course it was wonderful to hang out and stay with our good friends. We ate too much, laughed constantly, told stories and caught up. It is nice to see that while life goes on and you don’t see some people for a few years, if the love and connection is there, you can pick up where you left off and enjoy the time you have together. Now we just need to convince all of them to come out and visit us!

I’ll try to post some pictures soon. I didn’t take all that many, which is so unlike me. J

ddv