We only had to pay for two days of parking at the Denver airport. Our car was there less than 48 hours.
We got to the gate for our flight out of Denver with 13 minutes to spare. Berck decided to take I-225 to the airport instead of taking the nice empty but very expensive toll road. Unfortunately, it was rush hour. I-25 backed up before we even got to 225, which was almost stopped. Fortunately, I had brought the little laptop, even though Berck complains every time I do. “We already have a laptop with us!” “YOU have a laptop,” I answer. He rarely lets me use the Mac laptop when his desktop isn’t around. I booted “my” laptop up, plugged up the GPS receiver, and started up Street Atlas. Soon we were making our way unhindered down a major eastbound avenue that took us to the toll road. We had to pay $2.75 for the amount of road remaining to the airport.
Our gate was B94, all the way at the end of the terminal. Even with all the moving sidewalks and walking very rapidly, it still took us a quarter of an hour to get there once we passed through security, which fortunately didn’t take any time at all.
Our plane was a CRJ-200, the plane Berck is learning to fly, operated by SkyWest. Berck had just received his crew badge that afternoon, so when we went outside to board the plane, he asked me to keep the rampers from loading his bag while he went and asked the captain if he could ride in the jump seat. It was bitterly cold, so I had to pull out my stocking cap of my bag to keep my ears from freezing while I waited. Berck ran back down the stairs from the plane reporting that the crew was very nice but they weren’t allowed to let anyone sit in the cockpit when there was room “in the back.” So Berck left his headset in his bag for the rampers to load, and we made ourselves comfortable in the half empty plane.
Our visit in Memphis was fairly relaxed. We got in kind of late, but we sat around talking to Berck’s dad for a long time. The next day he made us breakfast, then I took Berck’s grandmother to the grocery store to get some medicine for her and some groceries for me to make quiches. The next morning, Berck’s dad told us when we arrived, was a birthday brunch for Aunt Robin. I offered to make quiche, since I’ve found the best recipe in the world. I rolled out the crust the most easily I ever have and made two beautiful crusts. They weren’t quite done when my timer went off, so I left them in the oven, but by the time I checked on them again, they were past golden and mostly brown. Berck calls that “burnt,” so I figured I’d better start over. I was ready to put the crusts in the aluminum pans I’d bought at the store, so I dumped out the browned crusts onto a plate. Berck came by to sample them and sputtered something about salt. I then realized that I’d put 8 times the amount of salt in I was supposed to; my memory had failed me as I made a recipe I’d made a hundred times before. So I threw the dough I had rolled out into the garbage and started over a third time. This time the crust would not cooperate at all. I guess all that salt makes it easy to roll. I did discover, however, that parchment paper works even better than wax paper for making pie crust.
In the meantime, following the instructions for frying an onion, I hadn’t used a pan that had a lid that would make a seal, and it had started burning on the edges. Berck and his dad stopped sampling the too salty pie crust and ate my defective onion as I started over with a proper pan and fitted lid. Finally, my quiches were assembled and stowed in the fridge to pop in the oven first thing in the morning.
For supper, Berck and his dad ran to the store to buy some steaks, then his dad fried us some delicious steak fries and asparagus and mushrooms. He opened a bottle of wine as old as I am, a 1974 Rothschild, and poured us all a glass. It was so old that the cork disintegrated and the wine had to be decanted through a cheesecloth. We all tasted it. It hadn’t gone bad, but it wasn’t wonderful. Apparently, it had been delicious back when it was bottled, and Berck’s dad has had some of the bottles since then and said they were wonderful. This bottle tasted very mellow and old, but it didn’t really taste like much.
We sat around the table for hours as Berck and I quizzed his dad and grandmother on the family heritage.
In the morning we packed up and went over to Berck’s cousin Michael’s house for the brunch. Everyone raved about my quiches, even John, Robin’s long-time beau who is a cook in a very nice restaurant, though Robin pointed out that he’s a cook, not a critic. We got to see all sorts of people, Berck’s cousin Michael and his wife and one year old son, his other cousin Annie and her husband, Berck’s aunt Cindy and, of course, Robin. But we had to leave without staying too long to get to the Memphis airport in time for our flight home.
Now we’re back again. Next weekend, San Jose.