Worst Travel Day Ever

We had kind of a hard time getting from Madison to Salt Lake City. Our travel day started off with sitting in the Madison airport for 2 1/2 hours waiting for our flight to Minneapolis. I guess the weather was really bad in the Twins. We decided NOT to get up and queue up to try to re-book our connecting flight to Salt Lake - we figured what was the point - we'd just be adding to the overall atmosphere of stress and worry. We figured we'd just see what we could do when we finally got to the Twins. I was starting to contemplate a nice overnight with Chad & Lea.

When we got to Minneapolis, finally, at about 7:30, after a not too bad flight - punching through the clouds was not as awful as I feared - we hiked over to concourse C after coming in on F, and quickly discovered that Northwest had re-booked us on the later flight to Salt Lake City, because we'd missed the flight we were supposed to be on by about 3 hours.

We went and got dinner - sandwiches at a cocktail bar - I ordered a pot roast sandwich, because I guess I was thinking about the leftover roast beef sandwiches my Dad used to make, and this was nothing like that. It was bland stew-y beef on a bun - with some cooked onions, and a flavorless horseradish sauce. The sandwiches of my childhood were round, boneless beef slices - mom usually made chuck eye roast - on whole wheat toast with my Dad's homemade 1,000 island dressing - ketchup & mayo mixed with garlic powder and oregano - and lots of ground pepper. And, it must be a Minnesota-nice thing - they are so law abiding - I even got carded when I ordered a beer, Surly Bender.

Our flight to Salt Lake kept getting pushed back; we finally left about 11:00, and got to Salt Lake at 1:00 a.m. mountain time.

The shuttles weren't running so we took a cab. When we were a few blocks away from our Hilton, in front of another Hilton, the Hilton Garden, on one of the big, wide multi-lane one ways that Salt Lake City is famous for, a big SUV turned across our path and smashed into our taxi. We pulled over; they dropped behind us, pulled in to the Hilton Garden parking lot, and two guys jumped out of the SUV and ran into the hotel.

Our driver - who didn't speak English all that well - got another cab to take us the rest of the way to our Hilton, while he waited for the cops.

Talk about Minnesota-nice - I'm such a small town girl, I paid the driver. A New Yorker would never have paid for taxi service like that.