How do you sneak up on somebody in an A319?

It's not easy. It takes a lot of planning. And you have to be ready for the slightest alterations to your plan.

Since Gov. Paterson is on a mission to ruin the summer, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (Hannukah for me), I had to scrap any plans to fly to Colorado for the high holidays. So instead, I decided to surprise the mother and the sister this weekend in Colorado.
I booked a flight to Denver International for Wednesday and rented a car with the hopes of showing up in Fort Collins to surprise the family. It was a simple plan, a plan that could not fail. That is, until my sister told me casually that she and my mother were going to be in Denver on Wednesday afternoon.

Great. There goes Plan A.

I secretly became very interested in the whereabouts and travel plans that these two renegades had for Wednesday. I feigned massive interest in when they were leaving, what street they were going to be on, and how long they planned on being there.

Since I got to Denver in the mid-morning and they were not going to be in Denver until 4pm, I had plenty of time to scout the location and make a plan, Plan B at this point.

I staked out the office and secretly spied them as they arrived. My sister was going in for an interview, so I did not want to spook her before that in case it affected her performance. As soon as I saw my sister go in, I called my mother and told her that I had done some web-based research and discovered that there was a Starbucks about three doors down from where my sister was interviewing.

My mother took the bait. I planted myself on a bench between the building where my sister was interviewing and the coffeeshop. As my mother made her way to Starbucks, talking to me on the phone and thinking I was still in Albany, she suddenly realized that the voice she was hearing was coming at her from the park bench to her right.

Needless to say, she was both shocked and awed. She muttered something about how she thought she was going crazy and imagining things - going as far as demanding that I remove my sunglasses to verify that it was indeed me. (NOTE: I still don't know if she believes I am here.)

After sipping our coffee, we went back to the building where Luci was. As soon as Luci left the interview, my mom told her, "Call your brother, he's been bugging me and wants to know how it went."

My sister dialed me up and was somewhat surprised to hear my ring tone around the corner. She was even more surprised when I emerged from said corner and asked, "May I help you?"

As my loyal readers undoubtedly know, I have fully documented the trip, and will have pictures up as soon as they are downloaded. For the impatient ones, occupy yourselves with this map of my connecting flight between DTW and DIA. I flew on Northwest, which was a first. I have no major observations or complaints, except to say that I had a ton of legroom on the exit row, and I actually liked it very much that they allow people sitting in the exit row to board with all the special members/elite folks. I got a free cup of coffee on both legs of the flight (which incidentally was on the same plane - deplaning required in Detroit).

The aircraft was an A319 (but not the one above), which I must say was rather beat up on the inside. But whatevs...it got the job done. Like I said, and I am sure you believe me, I documented the flight extensively - so stay tuned.