Riding the Rim

I flew to Rapid City this evening to spend the weekend in South Dakota. This is not an April Fool's joke.

I've now been in 49 states. (Number 50 is Maine and I'm going there next month.)

I was fortunate enough to score an upgrade on my flight from LAX to Denver, even though technically they're not supposed to upgrade an award ticket. But the gate agents have lots of power, and I got lucky.

But the exciting part of the journey here occurred while our tiny prop jet was landing at the Rapid City airport. Both of the left tires on the landing gear went flat. It seemed like a smooth landing, but it felt bumpy while we were slowing down -- like the runway was really rough. We pulled off the runway and stopped on the taxiway. A visual inspection by someone in a truck determined we couldn't go the last few yards to the terminal.

The powers that be decided the safest way to deal the situation was to bring a bus around to drive us to the terminal. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, the Rapid City airport doesn't exactly have a fleet of buses standing by late on a Friday night. After about 20 minutes they located an old Air Force bus that had to of seen service originally in the 60s. (I rode a bus to Junior High School in the mid-70s, and this bus was more of a relic then the one I used to ride.)

Once we were on the bus it was literally a 60 second ride to the terminal.

My horoscope today said that something out of my control would happen to me and how I dealt with the situation would be a test of my character. I think what it was referring to wasn't the flat tire but instead the guy seated directly behind me who used the time we were trapped in the claustrophobic cabin waiting for the bus to whistle his favorite cartoon tunes. I bit my tongue and didn't say a word -- but I don't know what that means about my character.

Getting off the plane and onto the bus I saw the pilot looking at the tires. He didn't look to happy. I guess blowing out the wheels with your landing doesn't look to good in the ol' personnel file.

But I'm here and tomorrow it's off to Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument and the casinos in Deadwood. And Sunday will be the Badlands and downtown Rapid City.

The weather forecast is clear with highs in the 60s and 70s. So I guess I got lucky.