On The Road

A few weeks ago some friends and I went to this place we call the ruins. It’s a bunch of large abandoned buildings just south of Provo where some people go and play paintball and others go to tag. We went for the latter reason.

It was my first time to the ruins and it was really weird. It’s just a bunch of large brick buildings seemingly stripped of anything usable and basically sinking into the marsh sitting just a few hundred feet off of Hwy US89.

I drove that road to work for over a year and never realized those buildings existed. As it turns out, they were the predecessor to the now defunct Geneva Steel and it was called Ironton. At the outbreak of WWII, the facility was ‘moved’ to it’s new location on the shores of Utah lake and its production was greatly expanded. The steel plant was actually a strategic asset for the U.S. It was meant to be safe from any possible attack being so far from either coast (or anything else really worth bombing).

For some reason though, the buildings were left to the elements over fifty years ago and there is still nothing being done with them. We decided to use them as a canvas and practice a wee bit of tagging and graffiti skillz. (yes, with a ‘z’)

You can check out some of the stuff we did on Dan’s page. (Hope he doesn’t mind the incoming link.) My stuff is in half of the pictures.

Here’s how non-rev (standby) travel works in my family as we all try to get to Guadalajara Mexico via Phoenix, AZ.

Tuesday night my dad who works in New York City goes to La Guardia airport and tries to get to Phoenix on US Airways. Thunderstorms on the east coast prevent this from happening so he goes back to his apartment around 11pm. The next morning around 4, he goes back to La Guardia and is met with the same situation as the day before. He takes a taxi to JFK airport and ends up taking a Jet Blue flight to Long Beach, CA.

Meanwhile, my mom and little brother are trying to get out of Pittsburgh. They both make it in on a flight but then the gate agent gets on the plane and asks for the non-revenue passengers to gather their belongings and deplane. The online booking system double assigned some seats so there weren’t as many extra seats as previously thought. Eventually they figure out the situation but only my little brother is allowed back on and my mom buys an interline pass and goes to Chicago.

Throughout all of this, my sister Brook and her husband Linwood, are in Salt Lake trying for flights throughout the day. It’s a long process of waiting around for every possible flight going to Phoenix and finding out each one is full and waiting for the next one. Eventually my sister Alexis, her husband Ian, and Little Jake show up to join them in the standby game. All of them eventually make it out Wednesday night and head to Phoenix to meet up with Adam who got a direct flight and my dad who was able to connect through Long Beach.

I jumped in on the game as I showed up to the airport at 5am Thursday morning. I tried for the only two flights that would connect me and wasn’t able to make it. All of the flights for the rest of the day are overbooked and so I eventually left the airport and headed home, dejected and super tired.

My mom, however, has my dad’s passport in hand and makes it from Chicago to Phoenix to make a quick handoff to my dad who was unable to check in for an international flight without his passport. All those present and accounted for in Phoenix then wait for a a flight to Guadalajara and the game continues.

So that’s how you fly standby. Everyone is always saying they would love to be able to fly for free. But I promise you, it’s not for the faint of heart. It takes planning, skill, luck, and a really open mind as you try and work the system to get where you want to go in the amount of time that you’ve got. And when you don’t make it, there’s no crying to ticket agents about missed flights or anything like that. That, in fact, will get your flight privileges revoked on some airlines.

It’s just how it’s done. It’s resulted in a few Thanksgivings spent split up between cities, Christmas vacations spent on airport floors, and flying all day connecting through multiple cities to get somewhere that should have taken three hours. But it’s also resulted in traveling through Europe multiple times, day trips to New York City, quick trips to L.A., flying to D.C. just to have dinner at a good restaurant, and hanging out in Boston just cause I got bored of Pittsburgh. So as I sit here in Provo while most of my family is now in Guadalajara, I can’t be too upset, I was the one sending them pictures from Europe a few months ago while they stayed at home.

It’s been a year since I left Utah for Florida. I never would have guessed that I’d be back in Utah but here I am. The last 12 months have been pretty fun and I’ve logged some serious miles (which is why no one wants to buy my Tahoe).

Here are the places I’ve been in that time:

California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, The Netherlands, Belgium, and England.

A bunch of those places I visited more than once or went to more than one city, like California: Los Angeles twice and San Francisco, Florida: well, we’ll just leave that one alone, New York: probably six trips to New York city, The Netherlands: Amsterdam and The Hague, Belgium: all over, and two trips to England.

I got to spend July 4th in Los Angeles, my birthday in Florida, Thanksgiving in London, and Christmas was split between Pittsburgh and New York City.

The picture of everyone in front of the gate is a bunch of people, including a NBC affiliate newsman and the security guard, watching to see if I can pop a lock using an aluminum can.  In the end, it didn’t work.  I think some WD-40 would have helped.

The second to last picture is of me on a little contraption that spins you around.  I was so dizzy and disoriented that I have no recollection of Sam being there taking pictures of me.

And that was our trip.