Okay, here's my saga of Please Colorado. You're Lovely, but I Just Want to Go Home.

July 13 I was supposed to fly home. Spent 10 days with my sister, her family, her in laws, and our parents. It was lovely to be able to have so much time together after not being able to safely get together for so long. All adults have had their vaccines. Kids are too young yet.

My flight was supposed to leave at 1:50 going from Colorado Springs to denver. Its a short flight. You literally go high enough to go over the mountains and then go down again. 20 minutes of flight time.

Colorado is notorious for storms developing in the afternoon. Something I forgot about when booking because I haven't flown out here in the summer in a long time.

My flight from denver to cos was delayed because of storms when I was trying to get here. We did right turns in the sky for 30 minutes while the airport was getting hail.

Anyway, we get on the plane from cos to Denver. We pull away from the airport. We get nowhere. We just missed the weather window so we sat on the plane for a while hoping it would pass. It didn't. But because we sat on the plane for an hour we didn't have enough fuel to get somewhere besides denver.

Cos didn't have any more for us to fly to another city, other cities didn't have any either. Apparently there is an aviation fuel shortage around the country. We try to go back to the gate but we can't because they weren't expecting us back and they didn't have anyone to work the gate.

Meanwhile I know I'll miss my flight to NYC. I get on their app asking if there is another I could be booked on. Please read attached screen shot.

Now, I lose a bit of faith when I have to tell a company how their own company works. One time I had to explain how checks work to an insurance company.

I ask about other routes. Denver, Houston, and Chicago are all hubs for United. (There are no direct flights from Newark to COS). I always have to connect. I ask about these cities. Last flights from COS to Houston or Chicago have already left for the day.

Meanwhile, had I known about all these delays I would have gotten someone to drive me from COS to Denver. It's only 90 minutes. But by the time all of this happened, even if I left then, I wouldn't have made it. BTW, we're still on the plane, it's been over an hour.

Knowing that I could possibly get to Denver but then not get anywhere else that evening, there was a later flight from Denver to Newark, but it was totally full. I call and rebook myself for the next morning.

And wait.

The gate agent disappears for half an hour. Then she gets pretty testy at us because people are trying to rebook their connecting flight, which at the time they can't do for some reason that I can't remember.

Then they start to reboard.

I'm only 5 people back in this line but it takes me 2 hours to get up to her.

Finally it's my turn and then she's fussing over seat assignments for me. I appreciate the concern but at this point I honestly don't care. My longest flight is only 4 hours. Just put me on the plane.

New boarding passes in hand and 7 hours after I started I walk out of the airport.

The good news is that I'm on the first flight with my parents who were flying home the day after I was supposed to. The bad news, I wasn't behind my dad so I couldn't kick his seat.