Our luggage arrived on the first flight into Aspen Friday morning. We found it was fsater to drive out to the airport and pick up the luggage than wait for United's Aspen staff to drive it in to the hotel.

While at lunch Friday I received a call from the kennel Frisket is staying at. I won't go into details but she is sick. She has had this thing where maybe two-three days after we drop her off she has a temporary intestinal disturbance. This seemed different.

This morning the kennel called and they were in the process of taking Frisket to a vet (her regular vet actually). So, more panic and angst.

I make the, possibly rash, decision to fly home. Not because we don't trust either the vet or kennel, but because, well, I don't know, somehow I figured it would be better if I were there and could take Frisket home two days early.

So I pack. Given United's utter inability to get baggage through the Denver airport (based on sample set of 1 trip), I left my luggage with Lisa and just grabbed a carry-on bag.

I cleaned up, since a day-of-travel ticket brings you, er, "extra scrutiny" and headed off to the airport.

At the time I arrived there were six scheduled flights, all on United, to Denver.

All were oversold.

Except one scheduled for 3:00. I bought a ticket on that flight, since you cannot fly standby with a ticket for another day (so my ticket for tomorrow, Sunday, was useless).

I go through security. Before entering security I check the departure board and everything looks ok.

At security I get "special attention", which I expected. As I was the only person going through security, the special attention took about ten minutes.

One caution: when you are receiving special attention, and your belongings are in the red container, do not touch your belongings until you are directed to do so by the TSA agent. I mistakenly thought I was done after the pat down, the chemical sensing of my shoes and clothes, but I was not. Each item had to be scanned by the chemical thing.

And I can tell you this: neither the chemical scan nor the pat-down can detect a tube of Prada brand lip-balm.

After getting through security I enter the departure area at Aspen. The departure area is filled with people waiting for two flights to Denver which have both been delayed.

Both flights were cancelled. While the weather on the ground was fine, the weather at the pass into Aspen was apparently too bad to fly through, so the inbound flights turned around to Denver.

The next flight, scheduled for 12:something, was rescheduled to 2:something.

The flight I had a ticket for, originally scheduled for 2:54 p.m. was rescheduled to 4:54 p.m.

I managed to get a standby assignment, finally, for a 1:something flight which had been rescheduled to 3:something.

I don't see any point in being specific with the times, United is quite flexible with them after all.

I should mention the departure screen: it was still showing everything ok. Then I noticed the time: 3:49 a.m. And the date: September 4, 2006. I realize that Aspen is a couple time zones away from Brooklyn, but that seemed a bit excessive.

Over the next couple of hours the time on the departure screen never changed, it was still at 3:49 a.m. when I left.

I did leave, via the hotel shuttle. After getting some food (unfortunately incredibly stale junk food which was the only option at the airport) I talked to Lisa and she checked into the NYC bound flights. Assuming all went well with connections (and who am I to doubt that all would not go well), the earliest I could get to NYC was sometime Sunday morning. And that involved spending an inordinate amount of time at Denver, which I would like to avoid spending any time in at all if possible.

So, after paying an obscene fare for ASE-DEN, I cancelled that ticket and the standby ticket and hopped the shuttle back to the hotel.

All in time still to go to the wedding in about fifteen minutes.

And that is the day so far.