While running my last marathon, I told myself I would never do this again. The temperature in Duluth, Minnesota that day reached seventy-seven degrees and ninety-one percent humidity. I was just coming off a quadriceps injury and experienced pain and dehydration the entire way. I had to stop and walk numerous times along the course. I finished in four hours and twelve minutes, a time that was an embarrassment after qualifying for Boston the year before in three hours and thirty-seven minutes. One thing, about running marathons, though, is that about a week after the race, your muscles have recovered, your mind has blocked out most of the grueling parts, and you start to think about how you can improve in your next one.
This happened to me, and a year after Grandma’s Marathon I signed up for a race on Prince of Whales Island, Alaska. It worked out perfectly. The race was a week after I graduated from college and my parents said they would pay for my plane ticket as part of a graduation gift. Our family also has relatives that lived in Ketchikan, Alaska. We’d spend a few days with them and then take a three hour ferry to the island on the Friday before my race. There was no way I could turn down this opportunity to spend five days in Alaska and run a marathon there, so I signed up for the race and bought the plane tickets a month in advance on Expedia.com.
My sister, Christy, a freshman in college, came with me as my support. Christy had been to both of my previous marathons and so she had a slight idea of the pain I went through each time. I usually had her give me a massage after each marathon while I scream out “Ouch, not so hard!” or “Oh boy, yeah, right there. I didn’t even know I used that muscle to run.” Its not that Christy loved her role as designated massage therapist post my marathons, but she did like the idea of going to Alaska for five days.
We left home for the Madison airport at 12 PM Tuesday. My mom drove us because she wanted to be sure to take lots of pictures of her two little girls going on their first vacation without the parents. Security check went smoothly compared to the length of time it took my mom to hug and kiss us goodbye. We still ended up having and hour and a half of extra time to sit at our gate after we got all checked in. Finally, it was time to board and Christy and I gathered our three pieces of red matching luggage. The plane taxied out to the runway right on time and awaited permission for take off when this message came across the cabin’s intercom:
“Good afternoon ladies and gentleman. This is your pilot Jim Bradford speaking. Listen, its just going to be a slight delay here. We just got word from flight control in Chicago that they have strong winds at this hour and they are not letting planes land. We were told just to hold tight for about another fifteen minutes and they’ll let us know what’s going on. Sorry for the inconvenience, but there’s nothing we can really do right now. They don’t call Chicago the windy city for nothing.”
I glanced at my blue sports watch. It was 1:30. We still had plenty of time to catch our connecting flight. Our plane from O’Hare to Seattle didn’t depart until 3:20. I reached for the Sky Mall magazine in the seat pocket in front of me and began skimming through the pages of back scratchers, coat hangers, and nose trimmers.
Pretty soon the pilot came back on the intercom.
“Well, ladies and gentleman, I have some good news. The winds in Chicago have died down and they are permitting planes to land again. The bad news is that they have set our arrival time back one hour. We’ll just have to hold tight until then and make friends with our neighbors until we are permitted to take off. Sorry for the inconveniences this may cause you, but there’s nothing I can really do. The flight attendants will be passing through the cabin shortly with beverages.”
I checked my watch again. An hour from now it would be 2:45, which meant our plane would land in Chicago around 3:15. There was no way we were going to make our connecting flight. I watch Christy twist her boarding pass over and over again until it ripped into two long thin pieces. Inside I felt the same, but I was trying to be the calm one.
“Ok, so we’re not going to make our flight if it leaves on time,” I informed her.
“I know,” she responded.
“Well, we’ll just get off and sprint to our gate, maybe it got delayed because of the wind too.”
She nodded vigorously and smiled. I was glad I made her feel better, but I doubted my own hopeful idea. I wasn’t sure what we should be doing at this point, so I called my mom and told her what was going on.
“Well the airlines have to make it right with you. They will have to find you another flight to Seattle. Go to the information desk as soon as you get to O’Hare and tell them what happened. They’ll find something for you. Don’t worry about it. Everything will work out. In the meantime, I will call your uncle and let him know what’s going on.”
My mom was always the rational one during a crisis. When I was seven, my pet rabbit ran away and I cried for days. She told me that rabbits only lived with people for a little bit before they had to go back to their real families in the woods. Then when they have a baby, it can come to live with us again. Sure enough two days later a baby brown bunny appeared in my rabbit cage.
At 2:45 PM on the dot we took off from Madison. While in flight, the flight attendants announced all of the different connecting airlines’ gate numbers for any people who were going to have to jump off this plane once it landed and catch another one. As soon as our plane touched down in O’Hare and the pilot turned the seatbelt sign off Christy and I scrambled to get our bags and get to the head of the plane. We sprinted through terminal after terminal and up and down escalators hauling our luggage over our shoulders. Soaked with perspiration and huffing and puffing, we reached gate B17 at exactly 3:23. Our plane had just taken off. Christy and I hung our heads and slowly sulked over to the United Airlines information desk near gate B8.
We stood in line for about twenty minutes before someone was available to help us. The lady behind the desk flicked her finger for us to come forward and flashed a full-teeth grin. We responded with frowns.
“How can I help you ladies today?” she asked.
“Our plane out of Madison was wind delayed and now we missed our flight from here to Seattle,” I explained to her. “We still have to catch a flight from Seattle to Ketchikan, Alaska at 7:50 PM Pacific time as well.”
“Hmmmm,” she responded as she began typing away at the small off-white 90’s style computer in front of her. “Let’s see what I can do for you.”
I watched her shake her head no and curl her lips. Her curly blond hair was tied up in a tight bun that stretched the wrinkles on the sides of her tan face into parallel lines. Every once and awhile she would play with on of her gold hoop earrings and mumbled negative things to herself, like “nope, not that one” or “gee that won’t work.” I thought I was about to go into a brief state of depression when she finally told us she could find anything for today or tomorrow to Seattle.
“Let’s see, here’s one for Thursday. Let me now check and see if I can connect that up with a flight to Alaska.”
Another eternity passed, followed by more head shakes and negative mumbling. I wanted to crumble to the floor.
“Well, I can get you to Alaska on Sunday at 10:30AM. How does that work?”
“No!” I yelled as tears began to stream down my face. “My race is Saturday! I have to be there Saturday!”
Christy rationally explained to the woman that I was going to Alaska to run a marathon, as I incompetently couldn’t tell her because I was balled my eyes out in front of the entire information desk. The woman returned to her computer, more determined than ever now to help us get to Alaska. She even tried to get us on a connecting flight to Vancouver. There was nothing available.
“Well, your only option is to go on standby for the 5:30 flight to Seattle. Unfortunately that plane has been overbooked. If you can’t get on, there is another one leaving at 7:30 which has been overbooked as well. I’m really sorry I can’t do more for you ladies. I hope you make it to your race.”
“Gee, thanks lady,’ I mumbled under my breath.
We gathered our things and slowly drug them over to gate B10 to wait for the 5:30 flight. I called my mom to tell her what was going on. She responded with the response she always had when she knew things may not work out.
“I’ll say a prayer for you.”
When it was 5 PM, they began boarding the plane. Christy and I waited patiently hoping that most of the people in the rows that they were calling didn’t show up. A lot of people were lining up to get on, though, and the situation felt hopeless. Finally they began to read the standby list. Everyone in the world seemed to be on that list. Name after name was called.
“Rachel and Christy Matheson.”
Christy spun her head at me and looked at me like I was Christmas morning. I must have looked at her the same way because she gave me a huge hug that lifted me off the ground.
“We’re going to Alaska,” she shouted.
“No,” I said, “we are going to Seattle.”
We gathered our luggage and handed the woman our boarding passes. I kept listening to the announcements and realized that our names were the last to be called on the standby list. Once we were all settled in, I called my mom back.
“We got on,” I told her.
“Praise the Lord!”
5:30 came and went. The pilot came across the intercom at 5:45.
“Well, ladies and gentleman. As you can see, we’re not going to get out of here on schedule today. What happened is that the radar is malfunctioning and we are waiting for the flight mechanics to bring us a new part. I would say lets just go, but as I’m sure you all know, we do need out radar while in flight, ha ha. Anyway, hopefully the piece they bring us fits. The last one didn’t. Just sit tight and we will be underway soon.”
“Oh-my-gosh, seriously?” I mumbled to Christy. “Whhhhy?”
“Hey, at least we made it onto this plane,” responded my young optimistic sister.
Another twenty minutes passed before the pilot had an update.
“Well, it looks like the part they brought us didn’t fit after all. I’m afraid that we are going to have to switch all of you to a different airplane. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
I threw my head back against my chair and closed my eyes. This was a nightmare. There had been a slight, small ounce of hope that if this plane would have left on time, we could have made our connecting flight in Seattle. Now all bets were off. Christy nudged me and I open my eyes.
“Hey, you alright?”
“No. Don’t talk to me.”
Eventually we all unloaded off the plane, walked down to gate B5, and boarded another one. That plane took off right away and we were finally on our way to Seattle. I sat at a window seat and along the route, and I was able to catch glimpses of snowcapped mountains and river passes before the golden sunset. I wish I could say it made me feel all warm and happy inside, but nature’s beauty couldn’t contend with the frustration this trip had caused me to feel thus far. All of this so that I could go and put my body through three and a half hours of running hell.
We landed in Seattle around 9:30 PM Pacific time. Immediately after we got off the plane, Christy and I went up to the desk attendant right outside our gate and told her our dilemma. She began typing away at her computer and her black curls bounced from side to side as she shook her head. Before she said anything, she printed off three tickets and handed them to us.
“One of these is for your hotel and the other two are for dinner and breakfast. Hang onto these, they are like cash.”
She resumed typing and Christy and I stared at each other quizzically.
“Ok,” she said. “I’m going to call down to Alaskan Airlines and tell them your circumstance. I can’t do anything for you up here since it looks like all flights to Alaska have stopped for today. They will be able to help you find something down there. Just go down two floors and to your right. First, though, go to luggage claim and see if your luggage came through from the flight you just got off of.”
Sighing heavily, I picked up my two bags which seemed to be much heavier than before and headed towards baggage claim with Christy trailing behind me. Baggage claim was a zoo and we had to push our way to the front to catch of glimpse of what was coming through. Slowly the crowd began to diminish, and finally it was just Christy and I left. Our luggage never came out.
“You stay here and keep an eye out. I’m going to go over and talk to the baggage helpdesk,” I said to Christy.
I stood in line for over fifteen minutes with other travelers who were upset over the whereabouts of their luggage. I finally motioned Christy to come over and stand by me. Christy didn’t want to give up, though. She continued to stand next to the moving luggage belt, watching the same blue suitcase go around and around. Finally I had to yell at her.
“Christy! Just come over here, forget it, they weren’t on the plane with us.”
For the first time on the whole trip, my optimistic little sister broke down in tears. I think the reality of the nightmare we had gone through, the possibility that our luggage was lost, and the fact that it was 10 PM at night, 12 AM our time, hit her. I put my arm around her and hugged her in close. I realized at this point I needed to watch my temper and be more sensitive around her.
“It’s gonna be alright, Christy,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “We are going to find our luggage. It will get to Alaska with us. We have enough stuff to get by until then.”
I was glad that I had planned ahead for a situation like this and packed all of my marathon clothes and running shoes in my carry-on. Christy had enough clothes and personal items in her carry-on to get by for a couple of days as well. We reached the front of the line and told the woman what our problem was. She looked at our claim tickets and typed the information into her computer. She told us our luggage had arrived and was set aside to be put on the first plane out tomorrow from Seattle to Ketchikan. They would then hold it there for us until we got there. I was relived to hear that our luggage had made this incredibly crazy journey with us. I was concerned, though, to know how we were going to get to Ketchikan. I thanked the woman, then Christy and I went to find the Alaskan Airlines desk.
Down the escalator and to the right we found what we were looking for. The woman behind the Alaskan Airlines counter was in her mid to late fifties and very kind. She walked with us over to the United desk to first see if they could help us out, since they were the ones that messed us up in the first place. The man at the United Airlines desk wasn’t able to find any flights in his computer going from Seattle to Ketchikan, or Seattle to anywhere in Alaska for that matter. I began to get teary eyed again as they explained they could get us there by Sunday evening. The woman from Alaskan Airlines was an earth-angel though. I literally thought I saw a halo above her head as she stayed with us until she found us a flight to Ketchikan that left the next day.
“Here we go. This one leaves at 8 AM tomorrow and will take you to Anchorage, then Juneau, then Petersburg, then Wrangell, and finally Ketchikan. You’ll arrive at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon. How does that work for you ladies?”
“Great!” I cried.
I gave Christy a huge hug as the woman printed off our tickets as well as a set for the flight back home on Sunday. We gathered up our things one last time for the night and went outside to find a shuttle to take us to our hotel. Once we arrived the receptionist accepted our ticket that the Untied flight attendant had printed off for us and we made our way up to our room.
“What time do we need to wake up tomorrow morning,” Christy asked as she took down her long brown hair and climbed into bed.
“I requested our wakeup call for 5:30 AM.”
“K,” she said as she began programming her cell phone.
We set both our cell phones, both of our stop watches, the hotel alarm clock, and asked for a wake up call. There was no way we were going to miss this plane.
“Wait,” I said after we finished synchronizing everything, “lets get up at 5:15, just to be safe. Then if we don’t get up, we’ll still have the wakeup call for backup.”
“Sure, sounds good,” she said adjusting her watch to that time.
“You know, it wouldn’t hurt to get to the airport a little earlier. Let’s get up at 5 AM and then leave at 5:30.”
Christy looked up from her watch and raised one eyebrow at me.
“If you keep this up we just won’t have to go to sleep at all. We can just stay up and head over there right now.”
“Ha, ha. 5 AM. Program it. Goodnight.”
I woke up in the dark and looked at the hotel clock. It was 4:45 AM. I was to anxious to fall back asleep so I got up and began getting ready. Christy heard me moving around and groggily opened her eyes.
“Is it time to go?”
“No, I just can’t fall back asleep. I wanna make sure I’m all ready to go by 5:30. You can sleep longer if you want.”
“Not if you’re making all that noise I can’t.”
She got out of bed and went into the bathroom. By 5:15 we were both ready to go. We went downstairs just as the shuttle was arriving and it got us to the airport by 5:30. Passing through security at that time in the morning was a breeze and once we found our gate number we laid out on the open benches and went back to sleep. By 7 AM the airport was buzzing. I nudged Christy to wake up.
“You hungry?”
“Yeah,” she replied.
“Let’s use one of those tickets to get some breakfast then.”
We found a small bagel shop that was serving ham, egg, and cheese bagels. The smell made my mouth water. The last meal we had was at O’Hare while waiting for our names to be called the standby list.
As Christy was paying for her food, I looked down and saw a five dollar bill lying on the ground near the register. I picked it up and handed it to Christy.
“Did you drop this?”
“No.”
“Shhh! Yes, you did drop this. Here,” I said forcing it into her hand. I decided that finding five bucks lying on the ground was a sign that this trip was going to start to go right.
Christy and I departed for Anchorage at exactly 8 AM, not a minute later. We did what they call the “milk run” and had to make stops along the way to Ketchikan for people to get off and board. It got dreadfully tedious, but we were able to see a lot of the Alaskan scenery that would have never seen if we flew straight into Ketchikan. I took hundreds of pictures of the mountains, rivers, and glaciers each time we took off and landed. At 4:30 our plane landed in our final destination and we went to luggage claim. I asked the helpdesk if they had some luggage put aside for Rachel and Christy Matheson and handed them our claim tickets.
“Yes, it arrived this morning at 8:00,” said the man.
He went into a small room full of lost luggage and grabbed our two suitcases. A flood of cool relief washed over me. We grabbed our things and found my uncle standing near the exit. He greeted us with a warm Alaskan smile.
“Your mom has been updating me about your journey. What a trip, huh?”
“Yeah,” I responded. “All of this to run a marathon.”
He chuckled and helped us carry our bags to an awaiting ferry giving ten minute rides to Ketchikan.
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