This last weekend was pretty good. It was also pretty busy. Lots of driving, lots of visiting with old friends, lots of doing this’s and that’s…
So here’s the story of the one thing that didn’t go as planed… As frustrating as it was, I’m sure one day we’ll laugh about it, I’m just not sure when…
I had contacted a few of my cousins who hadn’t ever had a chance to see conference in person and was planning on taking them to the Sunday morning session. The night before I checked the tickets and parking pass where all there and accounted for. I was excited to go!
The next morning we all get up and take off in the car on the way down leaving around 7:45, we were all excited. Off we go! We are heading south on I-15, and get to the 215 interchange just to see with no warning that the police had closed I-15 southbound, just a quarter mile short of our exit (if that). Random, and frustrating.
Never mind that, undaunted we continue, and take 215, we’ll simply cut across on I-80 and get there in plenty of time. What to our surprise, but again the police are there, no warning, and have closed 215, again, just a quarter mile shy of our exit. The only place to go? To the airport (which is the wrong direction) as its the only exit open now.
Well, we loop through the airport and take the North Temple exit, as that’s the road we wanted anyways. So off we go! It’s now almost 8:30, we are already running behind, but we can make it up!
Off we go! Hardly any traffic at all, we’ll be there in a jiffy! Then we get to highway 89, and instant gridlock! All traffic comes to a screeching halt! The detour had eaten all our time we had planned on using to beat the rest of the traffic. Undaunted we carry on, we’ve made it this far, we can make it the rest of the way!
After sitting in traffic for 20 minutes (it’s now almost 9 o’clock), we diced to send a runner to reserve our seats while we park. By this time we were only 1 1/2 blocks from our parking. I pull out a ticket, and send the runner off, I also pull out our parking pass in anticipation of pulling in.
Another 20 minutes, and we haven’t moved any closer to the parking. So I decide to hand out the tickets for the rest of the passengers so they can at least get in while I park. I open up the envelope, and to my surprise, only one ticket is left in the envelope! Gremlins 1, Me 0.
I call my cousin to check he didn’t accidently get more then one ticket. Nope, he only had one. So we start searching the car (since traffic isn’t moving we had plenty of time to search). After we turn up empty, I decide I’ll park and maybe we can get in on standby. I reach for the parking pass (that I had put in the console during the search) and guess what? Gremlins 2, Me 0. It was gone. Again, another search ensued, and no pass was ever found.
By this time, it was 9:20, Music and the Spoken word was about to start, the standby seats are being seated (well, had been for the last 20 minutes) and we had only moved 10 ft from the time we sent the runner to reserve seats. Not wanting to miss any conference, we conceded defeat, handed out the tickets we had left and headed for home.
Thus goes the story of the Gremlins and the only black spot on an otherwise good trip. BTW, one would think we would of found the tickets when we got home and could look around, and nope, they where all gone and missing, even the parking pass… The Gremlins did a thorough job…