My Big Sky Adventure

Today was the first day of my Big Sky Adventure... and I am absolutely giddy... admittedly I've had some wine...

I'm attending the Wilderness Medicine conference in Big Sky, Montana. It starts tomorrow morning, I spent the entire day traveling. The airlines make no sense. When I looked at flights here, my choices for getting here from Indianapolis were to fly through Phoenix to get to Bozeman, Montana and spend the whole day traveling, or fly through Minneapolis with a 30 minute connection. I decided to go for Minneapolis.

So, I check in in Indianapolis. I immediately get a notice at the automatic check-in thing-a-ma-jiggy that says the flight from Minneapolis to Bozeman is overbooked and they are looking for volunteers to get on another flight. Uh oh... Then, the thing-a-ma-jiggy won't print my boarding pass for Bozeman and says to check in with the gate agent for my boarding pass when I get to Minneapolis. Hmmm... Delta is betting I won't make my connection.

Luckily, my plane lands in Minneapolis on time. We deplane on Concourse A. My connection is on Concourse F. %!$#*F!! The monitor says my plane is boarding. I took off running for the tram, then ran from the tram to the gate. Made it from one end of the Minneapolis airport to the other in 15 minutes. I got on that plane.

All is well until we approach Bozeman. Just as we are approaching, Bozeman gets hit with a snow squall with 50 mph wind gusts and quarter mile visibility. We circle, get low on fuel, and end up going to Salt Lake City. For awhile, I thought I might end up spending the night in Salt Lake City. Luckily, Delta needed my plane in Bozeman to take some more people back to Minneapolis tonight so we refueled and went back to Bozeman. So I got there. Three hours late. About as long as it would have taken me if I had flown through Phoenix.

I got off the plane in Bozeman and had the best chicken salad on a croissant and Gatorade I'd ever had. Maybe it was because I'd left Indianapolis at 9:40 am and landed in Bozeman at 5:45 pm Indy time. I was ready to chew my arm off!

After regrouping, I got on the shuttle bus I'd booked for the hour ride to Big Sky. I'm glad I booked the shuttle instead of renting a car. The road was slushy and winding. I was tired. I finally got to my hotel at 9 pm Indy time.

I have a huge room to myself. Two queen size beds, sitting area with couch (that also pulls out into another bed) and cocktail table, two more tables and a sink area with mini-fridge and microwave. I could have a party in here! It was good just to plop all my things down and stretch out.

I was suppose to run 5 miles today after I got here. Well, after traveling for 12 hours, I was tired. It's already dark outside. Then, it occurred to me that I'm also at 7500 feet. I decided running was not a good idea. And, I was starving again.

So... went down to the bar. Had some chardonnay and cheese fondue. Chatted with some retired school teachers that had been snowmobiling in Yellowstone all day. One of them had even climbed Kilimanjaro the same route I did in '97 and stayed in the same huts I stayed in. It was fun. I'm so happy I'm finally here. Now I'm ready to crash. I have a Wilderness and Urban Survival course at 8 am in the morning with my Navy Seal instructor. I think I need to get some sleep!