Flying to the Middle of Nowhere

As I said in my previous post, this blog began when I was bound for California with colleagues and couldn’t get farther than Salt Lake City. We were headed to Merced, California, whose nearest airports are Modesto and Fresno. Delta does not fly to Modesto and offers two flights each day from Salt Lake City to Fresno. We had missed the first flight; the second was full. For an hour the customer service rep tried to rebook four of us onto a flight that would get us somewhere in the vicinity of Merced. One-by-one he tried the airports in California, checking the mileage as he went. There is no quick and efficient way to do this, unfortunately. As the airports became farther and farther from our destination he grew frustrated. “My God, you’re going to the middle of nowhere!” he exclaimed, then thought better of it. “I’m so sorry,” he added quickly, but not to worry – so were we. There were no flights to northern or central California that day. We could fly into San Jose at 6am the following morning. Jackpot!