From Denver Cold to Warm Beaches in 12 hours

I had a horrific trip home from Denver Friday night which included:

• Being charged $130 to get back into my rental car, which I had accidentally locked with the keys still sitting on the front seat. After both of my roadside assistance programs refused to assist me, the $55 dollar locksmith quote I got myself was raised at the last minute because it was a rental car.
• My Treo 755p cell phone was liberated from me by the "friendly" Dollar Rental Car cleaning crew of Mexican and Somali gangsters who kindly pointed out that several members of the team (all still there) had handled my car since I left my phone in it minutes before. The manager calmly noted that they would open lost and found on Monday morning.
• After the fruitless attempts to retreive my cell phone from Dollar, I narrowly made my flight because an end-of-shift, 18 year-old United customer service agent decided to become a self-appointed TSA agent and refused to let me get in line to obtain a boarding pass for the last United departure of the evening because I was 3 minutes late for the 30 minute check-in deadline.

Doing some good reading on the flight, spending an evening with my ever sympathic and understanding wife, giving myself a little extra shut-eye Saturday morning, and then swimming 2.5 - 3 miles in the 57-degree, 30-foot visibility water off Newport in the bright Southern California sunshine with the ever-positive Dave Galli was extremely therapeutic. Thank God for weather and the beautiful ocean, and people like Ellie and Dave for their friendship so my appreciation of life and my faith in people could be restored.