Cousin Dr. Annie gets hitched

So my travel adventures at Burning Man didn't end when I made it to the Reno airport. I caught my flight from Reno to Denver, but there was a lightning storm near the Denver airport, so we had to circle in a holding pattern for a while. Eventually the pilot announced that we were out of holding fuel and had to divert to Scott's Bluff, Nebraska to refuel. We were on the ground for about an hour in Nebraska before heading back to Denver. When we arrived, we were about three hours late and I had missed my connection. There were no more flights on United to St. Louis that evening so I ended up having to buy a new ticket on Southwest to get me to St. Louis. I eventually took off (standby) around 9:30pm and landed in St. Louis around 12:30. I was planning to take the MetroLink train from the airport to Forest Park, so I headed up there and bought a ticket. Only after that did I see on the schedule that there were no more trains this late at night. I later realized that my phone was still screwed up with time zones and there may have actually been one more train I could have caught, but anyway I went to the taxi stand to wait for a taxi. I waited a while and folks in front of me got cabs. When it was my turn, I approached the next arriving cab and he asked me if I was Mr. SoAndSo. A family that had arrived after I did came up and took that one. It seems in St. Louis, at least late at night, there is not a standing pool of taxis waiting. Everyone has to individually call the company to dispatch a specific taxi for them. So I eventually got a ride to the hotel and arrived around 1:30am. I was rooming with Uncle Eddie, who was inexplicably awake and brushing his teeth when I arrived. He works in mysterious ways.

Saturday we had breakfast at a crepe place near the hotel and then went to check out the Gateway Arch and the Museum of Westward Expansion. Then back to the hotel to rest up some more before the rehearsal dinner at a restaurant not far from the hotel. After dinner there were cocktails on the deck at the hotel and we stayed up chatting a while. I drank three whole beers that night. That's my personal record. :-)

Sunday I woke up early to play tennis but my plans got message up by some TXT miscommunication. I went back to bed thinking tennis was canceled due to rain, but it was actually still on and I missed it. I met up with Matt and Frankie and we went into Forest Park and visited the St Louis Art Museum and the Mildren Lane Kemper Art Museum. I liked the contemporary paintings they had at SLAM, including Gerhard Richter's "Betty". More about Richter at Artsy.

The wedding ceremony was at the church Ryan's family has been going to forever, and the reception was at a hall inside the St Louis Zoo. Anne and Ryan had brought a country band down from Chicago and there were a lot of fun. There was ample cake and I had three pieces. We all had a good time celebrating together. Early the next morning I shared a cab with Andrew and Ariel to the airport and headed back home. At the Denver airport, I ran into Sharon and Ned, neighbors of Bill and Leslie, and they gave me a lift home, which was great.