Lucky

You know those lucky people you see in the airport who are riding around on motorized carts while you haul all of your luggage from one end of the building to the other on foot?  Well, on Thursday I got to be one of those people.  

We got up at 4:30 in the morning to make a 6:00AM flight from SLC to Denver.  (Before we get any further, I just want to let you know that our eventual destination was Alberta, which means that Denver was completely out of the way, but it would have been waaaay too easy to just fly directly.... sigh.)  This leg of our journey went pretty well.  Asher was relatively happy--despite being awakened two and a half hours early--and things went smoothly except for getting stuck at security behind and elderly couple whose entire carry-on bags were filled with liquids. 

We got off the plane in Denver at the (really) very last terminal on one end of the airport and walked with Asher, his carseat, and our carry-ons to the opposite end.  Our layover was short and we barely had time to grab something quick to eat and get to our terminal.  On our journey across the airport I noticed a cute little baby store and thought that it was a shame that we didn't have a minute to look around in it.  We arrived at our gate just as boarding was starting.  There were about twelve people getting onto the plane so it didn't take long for us to get up to the attendant at the gate.  We handed her our boarding passes and passports.  She looked at our lovely photos (yes, those hideous swamp monsters whose faces were plastered inside our passports resembled us enough to pass) and then stopped.  "You don't have a passport for the baby?" she asked.  Ummm..... nope.  We didn't.  Apparently, even a six-month-old U.S. citizen isn't allowed to fly out of his motherland without a passport.  The plane to Canada left without us.  

So, while Hugh made phone calls, did some internet searches and worked things out with the airline staff, Asher and I went to look at the cute little baby boutique.  They really did have some adorable stuff there, and if it all hadn't been ridiculously overpriced, I might have been tempted to buy some of it.  Not only did Asher and I get a chance to peruse the baby store, we also got to walk through every other store in the airport because while the airline staff was kind enough to reroute our flight to Great Falls, Montana, our new flight didn't leave for several hours.  Luckily, we were blessed with one of the most content babies of all time, despite all of the grouchy genes that I contributed, and Asher was happy the whole time.  Plus, the guy who rearranged everything for us called us a motorized cart so that we didn't have to haul our stuff back to the end of the airport where we started.

When we got to Great Falls, it was 4:00PM and we still had a three hour drive to our final destination of Cardston, Alberta.  (Yes, they will let you drive across the border with a passportless infant.  Apparently all of the really dangerous babies are flying nowadays so they have to be more careful with airplanes.) 

So, when all was said and done, we would have gotten there faster if we'd just driven the whole way.  Still, our method of travel was certainly more convenient than, say, a handcart.  Plus, if we'd driven we wouldn't have gotten to ride in one of those nifty carts. :)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes: it was worth it.