What a horrible way to end what was an otherwise perfect weekend.
Jay and Erin were married on July 18th at the Steamboat Grand Hotel outside in perfect weather under the pavillion with a reception following in the hotel's ballroom. All was well and good up to that point - happy bride and groom, happy families, perfect weather, picturesque location -the whole nine yards.
Then, Sunday... After a two hour breakfast at the local Village in (well, a fifteen minute breakfast that followed a 1:45 wait) we hopped in the rental to head back in to Denver to catch a flight leaving 4.5 hours for the three hour drive to make sure we had plenty of time to catch the plane. The problem: the three hour drive took five hours. So we made the mad dash through the terminal (after getting upbraided by the TSA security guard for jumping the line) to the gate... which had changed. Then, on to the new gate in time to board the flight which was fortunately 35 minutes late. Unfortunately that put us in the path of the storm that was blowing in from three directions and kept us on the ground in the plane for an extra hour and a half. So a day that was supposed to have gone from leisurely breakfast to nice mountain drive to quick flight into Kansas City became a Kafkaesque nightmare journey lacking only John Candy as an overly-chatty shower curtain ring salesman and an overnight on the Amtrak to make it a real life Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
But enough about that. As miserable as that was the rest of the weekend more than made up for it. I was honored that Jay convinced Erin to let me (Jay's cousin) be a part of the celebration. Here is a selection of pictures from the weekend (pictures of the Village Inn, rented Chrysler Pacifica, traffic jam from Silverthorne to Golden, CO, towering thunderheads to the East, West, and North of the plane, and the spectacular view of the tarmac of Denver International Airport not included for the sake of relative brevity and the author's sanity).



