HAYDUKE Trail Journal -- Day 0: 9/28/09

This is the most dirt-baggy/homeless I’ve felt since I spent a night in a highway rest area on the Continental Divide Trail five years ago. I’m lying on a raised gravel bed separating lanes of parking spots in the St. George Municipal Airport parking lot. A two-hour delay in Los Angeles meant I missed my connection to Cedar City. I managed to get a hop to St. George instead, but the 20 minutes lay over in Salt Lake City was not long enough to get my backpack on the flight. All of my sleeping gear is in my bag, in Salt Lake City, but the agent/baggage handler/stair operator at St. George’s airport took pity on me and lent me a blanket. It is a warm night, so I won’t be too cold, but the books in my carry-on bag do not make a particularly comfortable pillow.

I started the day frantically rushing around finishing last minute preparations for the trip. After I’d finally finished packing, my dad and I left for the San Jose airport. (He was flying to Albuquerque.) Once there, he stuffed me silly with food before his flight left. I strolled over to my gate and heard the words sound over the intercom, “Passenger Tarantino please come to the desk.” That can’t be good, I thought as I approached the desk. The agents, however, couldn’t help me, because my first flight was American Airlines while my connections where on Delta. All they could do was inform me that my flight to Salt Lake City was delayed, so I would not make my connections. They gave me the number to contact Delta’s costumer service and murmured a less than hopeful, “Good Luck.”

After a half-an-hour on hold, all a got was the information I already had and a dead cell phone battery. I decided to fly to Los Angeles anyway and deal with the problem by talking to an agent in person there. In L.A., the Delta agent and I decided the best alternative would be to fly to Salt Lake City stay the night than fly to St. George in the morning. . If I tried to go to Cedar City, I wouldn’t arrive until 9:00pm. But I could get to St. George by 8:00 am. The distance to the trail head from each was about the same, so I could get started earlier from St. George. After touching down in Salt Lake City, I was told there was still one flight leaving to get to St. George and I had just enough time to catch it. I sprinted through the airport, and the rest is history.