Planning my summer around Barack

Ever since Peyton turned 3, the D'Orazios have been a traveling family. Each year, we've taken at least one trip, usually two, somewhere. Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado. Most of those more than once. But only once have we traveled somewhere in the winter. So it's a little odd that Fiore's gone to Canada this week and he and I are going to Colorado next week.

Traveling out of a Chicago airport isn't generally a well-considered move. Flying out of O'Hare is especially risky. Flying out of O'Hare in the winter . . . . well, you're just asking for trouble. Yesterday, Fiore's flight was supposed to leave at 4:25. It was cancelled. Rebooked on an 8:05 PM flight (to Seattle, no less, travel time of 3.5 hours). Delayed until 8:42. At 8:45, he calls me from the airport asking me to track the inbound flight that is the actual plane they are supposed to take to Seattle since it's not at the gate yet (lovely website, flightaware.com, live tracking of any commercial flight and then some). Yep, it's there, in the 30MPH winds and blowing snow. Bad enough that when they finally got on the plane, it was sitting at the gate ROCKING in the wind. I love to fly and I don't particularly want any part of that.

They finally make it to Seattle, get to their hotel at 1AM Seattle time (3AM home). He actually called me to let me know and thankfully I slept right through the phone ringing. But all of these travel woes have me concerned about next week, flying to Colorado. Denver in winter isn't exactly a guaranteed cakewalk either. They're one of those airports that ends up on CNN because it's been shut down by oh, a BLIZZARD.

And then I get to thinking: we're supposed to fly to Denver this summer. We're planning to take the boys to Breckenridge for a week to go hiking and experience the ski runs that I won't actually ski by taking the lift up and hiking them. And didn't I hear on the radio that the Democratic National Convention is in Denver this summer?

Egads. Yes, it is. August 25 - 28, exactly the week we were considering going to Colorado. Don't really want to fly through Denver at a time when thousands of media, delegates, candidates, Secret Service, candidates, etc. are filtering in and out. Denver International's bad enough without that wackiness.

So now I find myself in the position of planning my summer vacation around Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Never thought I'd say that!