Back to Salt Lake City

First of all, a short summary of the last week (which should have been the first week at the ranch, thank you Eyjafjallajokull...) :
- stuck in Paris, as millions of other people throughout the world, 4 hours spent at the Air France office on Saturday, waiting for the locksmith to open the door which had been smashed in by angry clients on the previous day (this took 2 hours), then standing in the queue (for one more hour), then waiting for the system to accept and change my ticket (this took 3 different members of the staff, and one more hour), in the middle of crying people, most of them completely desperate, surrounded by policemen (in case of a starting riot) and firemen (in order to deal with extreme cases of desperate people)
- friendly mails received from the Grand in Kalispell and from the ranch, saying that they will deal with whatever happens to my flight schedule by the end of the week, any arrival time or day was fine for them, thank you guys for being so sweet
- a colleague buying me some (very good) chocolate "because it helps in such a situation"
- a striking idea in the middle of a nap on Sunday afternoon, which might result in the addition of an extra room in my appartment (for free !)

But today I am back in Salt Lake City, and things look just exactly the same as last time, exactly one year ago : friendly immigration officers, who take 5 minutes to joke about those crazy French girls who are ready too spend the whole day in planes and airports just to ride a horse ("Don't you have horses in France?"), and try and give some advice about the organization of the week : I tried to convince him that "the cowboys at the ranch" (oh my gosh, if my favorite wranglers could hear this, I am not sure that they would appreciate) did not necessarily have to spend the week teaching me how to use a gun ("in case you get attacked by Indians !".... (no comment) ), and that roping was far enough for what I wanted to do, but there was no way to make him change his mind.

And then the standard surprise for the security officer : "What is this airport code ? FCA ? Never saw it before". Please don't ask me why FCA stands for "Kalispell" or "Glacier National Airport", I wouldn't be able to answer. And of course the usual rain, as ever in Salt Lake City. One day, I will see the Mormon temple below the sun, but I will have to come back a 4th time for that...

Next news from Kalispell (or maybe from the ranch : tonight I won't be at the hotel before midnight, I might want to sleep then...)