Tuesday 24th January
We had a more relaxed morning, as we didn't have to catch a bus to the airport until 9. We were at the airport 3 hours before our flight, and as we had checked in the night before, we only needed to drop our bags and go through security, which were both very quick. I was able to spend some time in WH Smith's, and found 3 books I wanted. So I went back to my seat, fired up the iPad, looked on Amazon and downloaded them as e-books for slightly over half the price of buying the paperbacks. Actually, I'd rather have had the books themselves, but I have promised myself I will buy no more books. We have boxes and boxes of books in storage and nowhere to unpack them to, so e-books seem to be the answer. Anyway, books make a suitcase too heavy when you are travelling!
We were called to go to the plane on time, but there was something wrong with the tractor that drags the plane off its station. It failed to drag, then it failed to unfasten, so we were delayed by about an hour while they solved that problem.
I was very lucky to be the only person in a group of 3 seats, and so was Paul, so we were able to stretch out. However, I failed to get any sleep because I was so cold. I put on all the clothes I had with me, so I ended up wearing a short sleeved tee shirt, a long sleeved tee shirt and 2 fleece tops, and wrapping myself in two airline blankets, but I was still cold. My ears and sinuses had really started to hurt as well, giving me an unpleasant headache so I wasn't able to read, but fortunately I had an audiobook with me on the iPad so I was able to listen to that on the headphones. However, it was not altogether a happy flight. Paul was cold as well, but at least he had his new anorak - my ski anorak was left in Breckenridge because we had originally intended to go there straight from Toronto.
We arrived in Denver, and just let most other people off the plane while we repacked everything we had taken out of our rucksacks. So we were not amongst the first through border security and out to baggage collection. This turned out to be disastrous.
A suitcase not unlike mine was already going round and round the baggage carousel. I thought at first it was mine, as mine is fairly distinctive, a horrid dull brownish orange on top and grey underneath. It is the one I bought in Paddy's Market in Sydney, and I thought there couldn't be many like it. But mine also has a hideous lime green suitcase strap round it, so at first I was concerned that the strap might have been stolen (though I can't imagine why anybody would want such a vile colour). Then I looked more closely at the case and saw it also lacked the two address labels that mine has. So I looked inside, which confirmed that the case was not mine. Unfortunately, the owner of the case I was looking at had not looked so carefully at mine, before taking it and departing with it! Of course, I had to wait until all the baggage was out and everybody had gone to be certain mine wasn't just the last one off the plane, which took quite some time. Then we had to find somebody to tell us what to do, before going through customs with Paul's bag and reporting the loss at the appropriate counter. My troubles did not end there, as I stood shivering and coughing and snivelling at the counter while a nice helpful man tried, and failed, to get the computer system working. Eventually, he said he would report it on paper, and gave me a printed pro forma telling me how to check up on it, if it didn't return to me.
Of course, our transport to Breckenridge had already left by the time we had done all that, but fortunately there was another in about 40 minutes, so I sat coughing and sneezing on an airport chair until it was time to get into the bus. I had to wrap myself in Paul's anorak in the bus, as I was shivering so much, so it was a long two and a half hours up to Breckenridge. Fortunately, there was no difficulty in finding the condo from the excellent instructions we were given, and the condo itself was lovely and cosy. Actually, the condo is very nice, I'd post some pictures here but we have spread our belongings about and it doesn't look nearly as charming as it did when we arrived. I'll see what I can do on the morning we leave.
Of course I had no toothbrush and no nightie, but I was really too tired to care. I decided to sleep in my dirty teeshirt and dirty knickers. My body thought it was 4 am, though in Denver it was only 9pm, and I was stuffed up with cold, my throat was sore with coughing and my whole face was aching with sinus pain. My medicine chest, of course, was in the missing suitcase, but Paul managed to find some paracetamol in his, and I took some and staggered into the bedroom. There, I noticed that the carpet seemed to be saturated, but frankly I was beyond caring, the bed was several feet above the wet and I just got into it.
The icing on the cake was the neighbour coming home at 2am and making so much noise I thought they were in our condo, not theirs. We both woke up. Once I was awake, I couldn't breathe through my stuffed up nose, and I began to wish I had stayed at home!
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