From Raleigh to Banff, with slight travel modifications due to a freak snowstorm

Well Tuesday morning we began our trip to Banff, Canada. While the flight didn't start until Tuesday morning, the action started Monday afternoon when we received a nice phone call from Northwest airlines. They were so kind, they called to let us know that they feared for our safety with the upcoming storm. Due to the potential snow in North Carolina (SNOW!?!?!) they decided to cancel our flight and rescheduled us on a flight leaving in the afternoon and arriving finally in Calgary at midnight. Well, since the meeting started substantially earlier than midnight, I spent some time (along with Kathleen giving me pep talks to keep going) to get us on an other early flight with Delta. So Tuesday morning, Matt Heaton drove us to the airport in 1-2 inches of snow (for those of you not here in NC, this is apparently a paralizing amount of snow-please don't laugh to hard all of our friends in Colorado and Utah). We then waited a little bit before being permitted to board our flight, and in my wandering in the airport I found this super cool vending machine:

Yes, now you can drop 200-700 dollars at the iPod/iPhone vending machine. I wasn't quite sure, however, if you were able to purchase a phone contract...now that would be nice.

After boarding the plane, we then had another 1-2 hours of waiting before being permitted to take off. This was because they had to deice our plane. This was also because they had to deice our plane with one spray bottle and two squirt guns. Finally, after spraying us down, we were into the sky heading on our way to SLC. As we took off, Kathleen and I took the opportunity to photograph ourselves:

I want to apologize to everyone who did not want to look up my nose. I am sorry. Once we arrived in SLC, we found out that we had missed our connecting flight to Calgary. Never fear, the airlines had got us another flight to Calgary, but this time we had to go to Las Vegas (huh?). We arrived in Vegas, and apparently the mantra can also be "what ever lands in Vegas, stays in Vegas", because they did a really good job trying to make us miss our flight. We had to physically leave the airport, go to a new airport, and then go through security all over again to finally get on our AirCanada flight (which is AWESOME) to Calgary. When we got to the AirCanada desk, we found out the flight had closed-I think between Kathleens half-nelson and my Bear-growls we convinced them to open it up and let us get on it. Finally, we made our way towards Calgary, as can be seen by the sunset that Kathleen got as we closed in on Calgary.

I just want to explain why AirCanada is awesome. 1) Food- They gave us a complementary meal. And it wasn't one of those bad meals. It was a really, really, really, REALLY good sandwich. Also, no peanuts just cashews (now that is a real nut). 2) Free newspaper-as we got on, everyone was offered a newspaper-when I fly Delta I am lucky if I am offered a seatbelt.
3) Movies- They had all sorts of movies (again Free) to choose from. And, also you got to choose when you wanted to start them-that is super-awesome-cool.

After getting to Calgary, we then had a two hour drive in front of us to Banff. We got our car, and took off. I was in such a hurry I was going like 110-120 the whole way (editors note, km/hr, not miles/hr). We made it in under 2 hours, and got to check in. The place was amazing, I am sure that we will post some more pictures of the hotel, but this is the one that I want to show. this is the end of our trip for the day!


So, our trip was complete, and I couldn't ask for a better/funnier/happier/more good looking travel companion!