No frickin way...I got too much range for that

Well I figure that I will start the inevitable wave of Frozen Four posts made by the Warner boys. And no matter how much we talk about it, I don't think that we'll be able capture everything about the weekend.

But for me, it has to start with the crap sundae that I was served as I tried to get to St Louis. My flight was supposed to land 5 hours before the puck hit the ice for the first of the semi-final games. I left my house at 5:15am and had what was supposed to be an hour layover in Washington. Well 10 hours later and 2 missed semi-final games I arrived at the Downtown Hilton at about 9pm. My plane in Washington (Dulles) had a mechanical problem and I ended up on a 7pm flight rather than the 8:35am flight I booked. Now I understand these things happen and I tried not to get too upset, but those of use that were stranded in Dulles were in unanimous agreement that we were left in the dark for most of the day. Here's some things we were told:

"Your flight is coming from Syracuse and had a small problem there, so we will be a little bit delayed."

"Your plane is here, we are just waiting to locate a cleaning crew before we can load you."

"Someone got sick on the plane and we have to wait for that to get cleaned up" (But I don't know where this one started, the previous two were announced)

"Your plane has a mechanical problem, but the mechanics are actively working on it and we should be on our way shortly"

And finally, "Your plane might not get off the ground today, so you might want try and get on another flight"

I finally got one a 7pm flight, much too late to see any hockey on Thursday. When I departed they still hadn't cancelled the original flight, then scheduled for a 10:15PM departure. They gave us $100 vouchers, but I have been actively working (and when I say it I mean it) on emails and letters to send out to United which I hope result in a free flight back west this summer. Thanks to Bubba, I can only speculate at this point how many times the phrases "hoser" and "snack on that for lunch" will appear in the letter.

But several angry shots of Jager and $2 pitchers from the Morgan Street Brewery later I put that behind me and was ready for fun. And it was. I'll save hockey details for another post, and share a few of my favorite pics of the Arch, which was amazing. I changed a couple to black and white because I think it looks really cool that way. One quick word on the FF experience. Hockey fans are incredible. There were some fierce rivals there, but off the ice everyone was so awesome and just wanted to see good hockey and have fun. And the championship game was incredible. Can't wait to see all the other pics!