December 2015, what a fucking mess. I had my annual trip to Dallas for the holidays, and I was to fly back to Seattle, and then to New Zealand and Australia for an short vacation. My Itinerary was:

Dec 24th
SEA-SFO
SFO-DFW

Dec 29th
DFW-DEN
DEN-SEA

Dec 30th
SEA-SFO

Jan 1st
SFO-SYD
SYD-AKL

Jan 6th
AKL-SYD

Jan 7th
SYD-SFO
SFO-SEA

Getting to Dallas didn’t cause any drama, but it shit blew up on the way back to Seattle. In fact, the flights to DFW provided lovely views! Flying out of SEA and watching the sunrise around Rainier

Colorado?

Moonrise

Sunset

Alright, back to Seattle. I landed in Denver at 10pm, only to find short 1-hour delay on my next flight to Seattle. Soon, that 1-hour delay turned into a 3-hr delay, and then into a 5-hr delay. Shortly before midnight, United straight up cancelled my flight… I quickly called the 1K hotline, and was rebooked on an early morning flight. No problem, right?

*False*

When I went to the DL counter to collect by boarding pass, they said that UA had messed up the reservation and that they needed to re-issue it. Thus, I called the 1K hotline again to get this resolved. They claimed that the ticket had been issued correctly, so maybe DL was not wanting to issue me a ticket because that particular flight was oversold by 4-seats (why the heck do airlines do this???). I asked if there were other morning flights, but there were none. By that time, they had rebooked most of my original flight onto morning Seattle flights, so I was SOL. Meaning I might miss my flights to Auckland.

*That’s when the panic set in*

I ran back to the DL counter, and they advised that the the reservation had been made, but UA didn’t issue the ticket. Thus, I ran across the terminal to the UA counter and after a half-hour effort, a ticket agent said “I may have fixed it… but I’m not sure,” go see if you can check in with DL now… It was 2am now, I walked over to find the ticketing counters closed, so I tried checking in via one of the kiosks…

*annnnnd….. SUCCESS!!!*

Alright, then I went outside to catch the shuttle to the hotel UA had booked me into that night, only to find out the shuttle had stopped running. Thus, the airport floor was my bed for the night. Six-hours later, I woke up, went through security and caught my flight to Seattle. For those flying to Seattle via Denver, always sit on the left side of the plane for the best views

Safety first!

A break in the clouds

The Tatoosh Range and Mt. Ranier

Circling around…

Check out Little Tahoma!!! and Mount St. Helens!

We landed on time, I re-packed, caught my flight to SFO, and successfully boarded my SYD-AKL flight. Luckily the Qantas fight was SUPER empty, so I collected a bunch of blankets and pillows, and turned my row of seats into a nice comfy bed…

Alright, that’s enough for now…