Salty

Kandace Collins / Critical Mass, 2008 / Wax

Twelve years ago, work sent me to a conference in Salt Lake City. I wasn't super excited about it and even less thrilled when I got bumped from my flight in Denver and had to spend a night in an airport hotel with no luggage. (The luggage didn't get bumped which surprised me.) The Denver airport hotel was not really anywhere close to the airport. (I don't think much of anything is actually close to the airport there.) The particular hotel they put me in seemed to be far away from anything. The only thing nearby seemed to be a 7-Eleven. The conference itself was fine and I didn't miss too much (the keynote address and maybe a bit more on the first day). Salt Lake City itself seemed nice enough from my limited explorations. My favourite was an art gallery that was between the conference center and my hotel which had this creepy beautiful sculpture of wax hands just sticking out of the floor. Delightfully, on my way home, there was potentially bad weather in Regina, so they requested five passengers to volunteer to give up their seats to ensure they had enough fuel if they needed to divert. (They didn't.) Since I had a free day the next day, I gave up my seat for the $650 voucher. (That voucher plus the one from being bumped at the start paid for my flights to San Francisco and New Orleans the next year.) The second airport hotel was nicer than the first. It wouldn't be where I'd choose to stay, but a nice enough hotel. It's just that it was surrounded by big box stores and chain restaurants all of which were closed by the time I got there and not open when I left. I'd rather have stayed somewhere downtown where there was a pub to go to.