i just flew in from michigan...
...and boy are my wings tired.
haha, lame joke, i know.
but this has been quite an interesting week.
let's start on monday, shall we?
i arrive at the airport at 3:45, because my flight was at 5:55. always good to arrive two hours early, right? well, i was flying midwest airlines (which i will never ever fly again), and the people at the front of the line were trying to purchase tickets for later this week. that took half an hour. there was only that one person at the ticket counter. so it took me about 45 minutes to get my boarding pass (i wasn't even checking luggage, but no e-ticket machine for midwest at DIA). they told me the flight was on time and everything. so i get on the little train to go to Concourse C (i think it was the first time i've ever been out there, normally i fly united). i get up there, the screen says on time. by the time i get to the gate, the time now says 7:00. ok, so it's been delayed an hour, i can handle that. it gets around 6:30, and we haven't seen anyone from Midwest Airlines actually explaining to us what was going on. there were rumors of weather problems, mechanical problems, tornadoes, etc. but no one knew for sure. so at 6:30 the guy finally shows up, and changes the time to 9:00. ok, now i've completely missed my connection flight from Milwaukee to Marquette. so we're all sitting around there, bonding through bitching. 9:00 comes by, and the time still says 9:00, but there is no plane. in fact, the plane hadn't even left milwaukee by that point. but it was alright. since it was mechanical problems (the a/c didn't work, and then one of the toilets was plugged up), they were going to fly us out to milwaukee and put us up in hotels since we wouldn't make our connecting flight. at 10:30, the guy (i felt really sorry for him, because it wasn't his fault) tells us the plane had just left milwaukee. and then, at 11:30, he tells us that our flight ended up being cancelled because there was a severe thunderstorm over nebraska and iowa, and that's our flight path. so, now that it was weather related (although for 6 hours it was mechanical), they couldn't put us up in hotels. but i wasn't about to drive back up to superior to sleep on the floor of my apartment, and i sure as hell wasn't about to drive all the way up to silverthorne to make an 8 am flight the next morning, so i stayed in a hotel. of course, we did have an 8 am flight (or so we thought), and so we had to be at the airport super early. they didn't even show up at the ticket counter until 7:00, to tell us that our flight would take off between 8:30 and 9, probably closer to 9.
we finally do board the airplane sometime after 9, but after a lot of bitching and nobody was happy and everybody said they would never fly that airline again.
and we arrive in milwaukee around noon. my flight to marquette is at 9:40 pm, because ben was working and couldn't pick me up for any of the earlier flights. and if i had to be stranded, i'd much rather be stranded in milwaukee than marquette. so i decided to make the most of it and went into the city. i went down to marquette university, one of the law schools i applied to, got waitlisted at, and will probably reapply to. i got to talk to a guy in the admissions office and he gave me a tour of the law school, so that was nice. and then i went down to the milwaukee public museum, on ben's recommendation, partly because it's near marquette university (not to be confused with marquette, michigan), and ben said it was one of his favorite museums. and it was a really cool museum, and if you're ever in milwaukee, i would recommend visiting it. it's a natural history museum, but it's really interesting, even if it is very wisconsin-oriented. so i did manage to kill some time, although it put a nice dent in my pocket (cab fare from the airport to downtown, one way, was $30). i headed back to the airport, because i'm paranoid about stuff like that, and ended up getting there four hours before my flight. only for it to be delayed for another hour.
so, i eventually got into marquette (michigan) 25 hours after i had originally planned. fortunately ben hadn't been waiting for me all that time. he only had to wait an hour. but an hour in the middle of the night is quite a long time.
and it was amazing when i arrived. we picked up exactly where we had left off. we hadn't missed a beat. it was as if these past three months hadn't happened, we hadn't been apart. and it was the best feeling anyone can ask for.
wednesday we spent the day in marquette. we spent some time downtown, and went to the shore, visited the light house, went to a play and went to the bars. the next day we drove downstate, to mackinaw city, and stayed the night there. the next day we took the ferry over the mackinac island, which is in lake huron, and is an old-fashioned island, a bit of a tourist trap, but it was still really cool. there was an old fashioned fort, which was used in the american-indian war, and a bunch of other really cool stuff. that night we drove back to munising, which is the town he lives in, and where the park is at. he showed me a little bit of it, like right around where he lived, but it was getting dark so we didn't get to see much. and yesterday he had to work. we went on some mini-hikes in the morning, visiting waterfalls and some of the rock formations that were easier to get to, just because he did need to be back to go to work. and when he went to work, i went on a boat cruise of the lakeshore. the attraction is more in the cliffs on the shore than what's inland. the cliffs are really amazing, because they have mineral water seepage, causing different colors to essentially drip down from the rocks. and because of the really nasty conditions that can be caused by the lake, there are some really cool rock formations. so then ben and i met up for dinner, and we went on a couple more mini-hikes, but we couldn't go too far because he was the only ranger on and had to stay in the front country in case an emergency came in.
and i left this morning. i talked the airlines in switching my return flight to the next day to make up for the fact that i lost an entire day out of my original vacation. and they did so at no extra charge. which was pretty nice. not as much drama as getting out here, just delayed about an hour in milwaukee. and i'm back here now, in my apartment in superior which is a bit on the bare side, and i'm not excited about having to sleep in the sleeping bag tonight, but i got in too late to pick up raleigh, so i have to do that tomorrow.
and for the most part, everything went incredibly smoothly. but, as it happens when two people spend too much time together without a break from each other, well, we didn't exactly get into a fight, but last night we did get very much into a conversation which annoyed both of us. it was kind of the inevitable "what's going on with us right now, what will happen for the rest of the summer, and what will happen if/when he gets back to colorado" question. which, i guess was kind of good to bring up, and in the end i think we were more or less on the same page (or at least in the same vicinity), but we just had different ways of expressing it. and i was scared as hell of the idea of leaving michigan this morning with both of us mad at each other but after breakfast (neither of us can operate very well without food and caffeine), we discussed about our previous discussion and realized we were coming from the same place and did end on a good note. so, the only problem in the five days turned out to not really be anything, and we're just forgetting about it. and it does amaze me that after three months of only talking to each other on the phone about once a week, we can pick up right back where we started from, not missing a beat, and not killing each other, and even making it through most of the week without conflict.