Estes Park... Sunday

Sunday was one of the longest days ever.

It began early… like 5:30 a.m. following my second night of only getting about three hours of sleep. I was up last night packing… after the three-hour saga at the Apple Store. I still hadn’t printed business cards to have for Estes, although I had them all laid out and ready to print and I had the card stock to do it.

John and I have three printers in our office at home. I printed one page that looked great. The second page came out looking all green. That was when I discovered (at about 12:30 a.m.) that all three printers were out of ink..

The airport was an absolute zoo this morning. There was a huge convention in St. Louis over the weekend, and all those people were headed home. The line to check in at American Airlines was ridiculously long and slow, and then the security line was exactly the same. If a very nice TSA person hadn’t allowed me to cut in front, I would never have made my flight. As it was, I got to the gate just in time to walk on.

Dallas. My brand new suitcase arrived with the handle broken off. Here I would really love to stop and tell the entire sordid story of my dealings with American Airlines about five years ago when they made me miss my flight, told me it was my fault, and then lost my guitar as I was trying to get to Estes, but I would only end up furious all over again. Let’s just say, I’m not a huge fan of their customer service. Yesterday, when I asked someone at baggage about the broken handle, she said, “Sometimes they don’t make the handles strong enough for the suitcase.” Nice.

Not really what I think a customer should hear. How about, “I’m so sorry your suitcase got broken. Let’s see what we can do to fix that.”

At least in Dallas the fun part of the trip really began. Rick and Cindy and Hudson delivered Alex to me. We had time to run to Steak and Shake for some food, and Hudson was so adorable, I almost forgot about the suitcase.

Back at the airport, Alex and I had tons of time to get checked in and wait for our flight to Denver. And once we landed and got our rental car, we were headed for Estes. We found a Staples Store in Boulder that was able to print the business cards for me while Alex and I grabbed dinner. So that problem was all solved.

I love driving up to Estes Park through Boulder, and today I got to see it through Alex, who has never been to Colorado. She was so excited to see mountains and was oohing and ahhing the whole drive about how pretty it was.

We had every intention of going to the concert last night where Michael W. Smith and Pocket Full Of rocks were leading worship, but once we got settled in our room around 7:30, we were just too exhausted to do it. We stayed in and watched a movie… and Music in the Rockies had to wait until Monday.