Day 27. Escaping Denver

Day 27. 1st.
I woke at about 4am & walked about to find out which flights went to Kansas City. With the new information on hand, I went & woke the boys to see Paul work his monkish magic.
We tried Great Lakes for sponsorship.
They diplomatically laughed at us. God bless hope building urbane legends. But, undeterred, we got our PA person Pam on the job. She hit up United while we tried to catch a little more sleep. (Though I don’t think we told our hard working PA Pam that’s what we were up to.)


Nate got up & invested the last of our material clout on moral boosting Borritos. It worked.
We got up & went face first into the ridicule again. Actually, to be honest, Great Lakes staff were really nice. Even in a massively sleep deprived state I could appreciate that.
Teniva told us that they get Buddy Flights & if we could wangle it with head office, we could get a flight to Kansas City for $18.95. She then went about asking staff if any of them had spare buddy flights they were prepared to give us. ?! Staff only get 6 a year for friends & family. It was a big ask, but she went the extra mile, regardless of the seeming absurdity. She then went on to tell us that if we could convince Monica in promotions to give us a buddy rate for the flight about to leave, she’d happily put us on it. Unfortunately, while giving us her time, Monica had protocol to follow & was unable to oblige. Pam met with similar speed bumps with United. All went well until progress was squashed from above. And so, our attempt to hitch a plane ride came to an end.
Now we were stuck with the quandary of getting out of the airport & then out of Denver. Thinking caps when you’re sleep deprived seem harder to come by.


So far, when we’ve been stuck, it’s been for good reason. Then we meet someone, they teach us something, we are able to hand on something we have to them & then the glue releases & we continue on our journey.
This case was no exception.
We sat outside, watching for a vehicle. I was given a map of the state by one sympathetic driver, going the opposite direction & then we met a couple of interesting, fun moral boosting glue releasers.
They spoke to us through their window for a start, asking about the robes & then going on to come out on the sidewalk to talk about life, school, wishing they could travel & letting us take photos & bless them with holy water.
Before long, Nate was giving advise that a Birth Right Israel to Israel trip would be well beneficial, which in turn lead to them asking for some monkly advise on more personal issues. We warned them we weren’t ordained monks in the regular sense, but as has been the trend, it didn’t seem to bother them.
So we listened, talked a little, they thanked us & we were all on our way.
No more than 30 minutes later, I was typing away when another burrito landed in my lap. I will admit freely, was pretty pleased. So was Paul.

Jim the bloody legend & his buddy James had heard we were still in Denver & stranded at the airport & decided to play angels for the day.
They loaded us into James's tasty new Toyota & drove us far far away from that hitch compatible forsaken town.
On arrival at Limon we were offered a motel room, which we politely declined, given a CB radio to use to contact truck drivers, fresh batteries & a drink.
God bless you boys. I feel like one off Schindlers list.
We found a nearby river bed, set up tent & prayed for no flash floods.