Unplanned New Years Visit to Minnetonka

Our flight was the only airplane going from Wichita to Minneapolis on New Years Day, and Nicole was lucky to grab a seat in the back. The same could not be said for flights going out of Minneapolis, but I'll get into that later...
The flight back to the far north was uneventful other than a few pockets of turbulence. It was my leg (my takeoff and landing) and I had the added pressure of
1) Flying with the Chief Pilot for Minneapolis
2) Flying with nervous Nicole in the back (as seen here)
3) My old roommate from ground school also sitting in the back...no doubt scoring my landing on a scale of 1 to 10.

Fortunately, despite the sudden crosswind gust at 20 feet above the touchdown zone, I felt I put us down fairly smoothly. Nicole tells me it was acceptable. We made good time on our way from Wichita to MSP, arriving about 30 minutes early. Because of this, I quickly listed us on an earlier United flight back to Los Angeles.

It was going to be our best odds of the day as it was only overbooked by six and we were about 7 and 8 on standby. The flight left full without taking any standby passengers and the night only went downhill from there. The next Delta flight was overbooked by 12 and we were 17 and 18 on standby. No one got on -- meaning everyone got rolled over to the next flight where we now saw ourselves at 37 and 38 on standby.

Rather than wait around for hours for the inevitable, we decided to get out of the airport, rent a car, and stay with my cousin in Minnetonka for the evening and try again the following morning. Nicole had never been to Minnesota other than the Minneapolis airport, so we did a small amount of exploring. I took Nicole to her first Culver's. Yes, technically Culver's is a Wisconsin thing, but Nicole needed to experience it while she had the chance. Culver's is getting on my crap list, though. They messed up my order twice in the last two visits. I ordered a sourdough melt and a chicken sandwich to go after my last trip and without checking the bag, I ended up with just chicken tenders and no sandwiches. Sad day for Brian! Luckily we ate in and caught their error on this visit. I can't be too upset, because as a former Culver's employee, I'm sure I made lots of errors as a confused and awkward young 15 year old wearing a belt to hold up my oversized khaki shorts.

After dinner, we observed my cousin and her parents working together to make some holiday cookies. I contributed by eating them. Now it was time to see what our flight options were looking like for the following day. United was our best bet -- overbooked by 4. We would be 1 and 2 on standby. The next option was this doozy of a Delta flight. I had to take a screenshot because I didn't think anyone would believe me. At the time of this image, there were 54 people on standby. When we arrived at the airport, TSA was moving slowly and inefficiently. The airport instated a 10 minute delay on all departures so people had more time to reach their gate.

This did not work to our advantage. As the door was about to close for the flight, our names were called AND with seats next to each other. Just then, the two people whose tickets were almost in our hands showed up at the gate. I am not a violent person, but I was possibly hoping one of them would have broken a leg in those final steps enroute to gate E10. The arrival of these latecomers left one seat in the cabin. I told Nicole to take it since her odds of getting on anything else for the rest of the day were daunting at best. On any other day I could have snagged the jumpseat, but another pilot was commuting on his way to work, so I gallantly (albeit begrudgingly) watched Nicole depart as I wished the other pilot good luck, did an about face, and walked down to the Delta gates where there were now 68 people on standby. As Nicole was taking this picture out the window of her E-175, I was launching out of Minneapolis riding sidesaddle on a 757, with one leg bent awkwardly behind me and my neck craned the other direction to see from the elevated jumpseat crammed just behind the captain's chair. There were 82 standby passengers stranded back at the gate. I felt like I was on the last chopper out of Saigon. I dared not think about the size of the standby lists as the day grew longer, but for the time being I was just thinking about a chiropractor.