Canceled Flights and Hitchhikers

Last weekend, Dan and I almost got stuck in Seattle. That was fun. I'm not saying this was some unique, dramatic experience. Flying is usually a crapshoot anyway. But we had a bit of an adventure, and now I have yet another cute story in my arsenal about the unpredictability of the airline industry. (For another uplifting anecdote, see "Are the Frequent Flyer Miles Really Worth It?" especially if you are planning on flying United any time soon.)

Dan and I booked an early flight from Seattle to Boise so that we would get home in the afternoon with time to spare before having to head back to work the next day. We woke up at 4:30 a.m. to accommodate our perfect plan. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time. As we were enjoying a breakfast sandwich, Dan received a text.

"What?" he exclaimed.

"Is our flight delayed?" No biggie. As I said, we had given ourselves plenty of time.

"No. Canceled."

It sucked, but we were sure we could get on another flight to Boise. Seattle flies to Boise all day, right?

Apparently not.

"There are no seats left on the 10:00," the customer service worker said to all of us bumped passengers who were starting to swarm the check-in desk, "and there are no more flights to Seattle today."

She turned to Dan and me, "You have been booked on a flight to San Jose tomorrow morning."

Not really needing to go to San Jose and really needing to get to work the next morning, I said, "Are you sure no other airlines have any seats to Boise?"

"We could just rent a car and drive home," Dan suggested. "If we leave now, we would be home by 4:00."

"How long does it take to drive to Boise?" asked another woman in line.

"About eight hours with good roads."

"Why was the flight canceled?"

"The plane was broken," the airline worker said.

"I'm glad I'm not on that plane after all," I said to the others with a nervous giggle.

Nobody laughed. I guess they weren't finding the humor in the situation.

I was about ready to ask whether or not the airline was prepared to pay for our hotel room and meals if we were indeed stranded, when the other worker behind the desk called out, "Sun Valley!"

"There are plenty of seats on the flight to Sun Valley. At least, that will put them two hours from Boise."

"I like Sun Valley," I said. "Let's go there."

So we were booked, along with most of the other marooned Boiseans, on a flight to Sun Valley with the hopes of renting a car or booking a seat on the Sun Valley Express. We also called my dad in Twin Falls thinking that, as a last resort, he could pick us up and get us as far as Twin where we might have more car rental options.

"We could hitchhike to Boise, turn this into a real On the Road experience," I said, "except we're not drunk enough."

We arrived at the Hailey airport, an airport that is about the size of our house. And it seemed to me that the plane put on its brakes really quickly once it touched down.

"Is the runway really short here?"

"You're imagining things."

We were able to rent the last car available, a Toyota Sequoia, a monster of a vehicle compared to the Fusion we're used to driving.

I called my dad to let him know he didn't have to pick us up after all. By the time I joined Dan again, some guy from our flight was wanting to split the ride with us. Dan had already assessed the situation, decided the man was not a murderer, and agreed to let him tag along.

"Picking up a hitchhiker, huh?" I whispered to Dan. "This really is an On the Road experience."

Luckily, Dan's assessment was correct. The man did not, in fact, murder us. Even after all of the craziness, we arrived at our house in Boise by 2:30 that afternoon. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Back to Boise via Sun Valley

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How Lance Armstrong Let My Mother Down

Earlier this week, when Lance Armstrong admitted that his seemingly miraculous career had been "chemically enhanced," I was a little relieved my mother was not around to hear it.

That may sound callous. Everyone who knew my mother, myself included, misses her very much and would rather she were still here to share in our lives. But I would be lying - not in the epic Lance Armstrong sort of way, but lying just the same - to say I wasn't slightly glad that she was not here to witness the (not super-surprising) revelation of Lance Armstrong's doping scandal.

In one week, my mother will have been dead for eight years.When she died, she passed believing the story of "All-American Athlete" Lance Armstrong who had beaten testicular cancer, returned to his sport, and won seven Tour de France titles.

In the late 90's, Lance Armstrong's cancer spread to his lungs, lymph nodes, abdomen, and brain. My mother's cancer eventually spread to her lungs and brain. Armstrong survived. My mother didn't.

One of my mother's last days in the hospital, a few days before she died, she said, "Remember Lance Armstrong? He had cancer, and he is completely cancer-free now. They could find a cure for me tomorrow too. I am not going to lose hope."

That is why - for today only - a week before the eighth anniversary of my mother's death, I am glad my mother was not here to be disillusioned by Lance Armstrong's admission and that she was able to cling to his survival story, a story that gave her comfort during those last few days of her life.

Am I angry? I don't know.

This morning, I read in the newspaper that the one thing that made Armstrong lose his composure during the Oprah interview was when he described telling his son the truth about the allegations against him. I got sad.

I don't really feel sorry for Armstrong. But maybe I got sad because, not only did he let his son down, he let my mom and all other victims and survivors of cancer down too.

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Rescued by the 1%

NOTE: This post was originally published on Saturday, January 7, 2012. Since then, Dan and I have celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary, have been to Sun Valley several times, and - so far- have never again driven into a snowbank. Knock on wood. Enjoy revisiting the story.

Dan and I spent our eighth wedding anniversary in Sun Valley, Idaho this year. For those of you not familiar with Sun Valley, a lot of rich people hang out there. At times, the attitude of entitlement some of these rich people cop with the retail workers, restaurant servers, and anyone else they deem an "underling" disturbs me. But, for the most part, it is a friendly, laid-back, and refreshingly open-minded community.

This year, in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, I spent the first portion of our trip yelling, "There goes the 1%!" at the crazy drivers (mostly with California license plates) in downtown Ketchum. I did this from the safety of our own car, where no one could actually hear me, and from the pedestrian crosswalks whenever a car, with its windows completely rolled up, tried to run me over. I say "in solidarity" meaning that it was my way of showing support without actually doing anything.

Then, on the afternoon of our anniversary, December 20, 2011, Dan and I were rescued by the 1%.

Dan had left his skis at Galena Lodge after a morning of cross-country skiing. Neither one of us had realized this until we were halfway back to Ketchum via Highway 75. As soon as the way was clear, Dan made a nice, neat U-turn. Or we thought it was neat until he hit a patch of ice, which must have been invisible to the naked eye. We ended up trapped in a snowbank on the side of the road. I should say I ended up in a snowbank because it was the passenger side that was actually trapped by the snow. Dan flipped on the four-wheel drive and tried to gun it out of the ditch but to no avail. We were stuck.

"Should I crawl to the other side? You know, distribute the weight?" I asked.

Dan looked at my five-foot-two-and-a-half frame.

"I don't think it would make much difference."

I have never worried about getting stuck because I am a proud, card-carrying member of AAA. I have been ever since my mother sent me off to college and somehow predicted that I would need several rescues (mostly due to the dome light in my '93 Hyundai Excel being left on overnight). But alas, there was no cell service in the Sawtooths on December 20, 2011.

Dan decided he would walk down to the Sawtooth National Recreational Area (SNRA) Headquarters to make a phone call.

"Do you want to go or just stay here?" he asked me.

Recollections of news stories about husbands and wives splitting up and disappearing and/or dying in the snow-capped mountains, followed by visions of a crazy man murdering me flooded my mind.

"I'll go with you, but I'm not sure how to get out of the car."

Did I mention I was almost sitting parallel with ground? That is how tilted the car was, by the way. If I had opened the door, I probably would have been suffocated by snow. (Dan just accused me of exaggerating. I just informed him that hyperbole is a common literary device.)

As I unbuckled my seat belt and crawled across to the driver's side, a Blaine County Parks and Recreation vehicle drove up, and the gracious worker offered to head to SNRA and call AAA for us. She couldn't give us a ride because she had too many dogs in her pickup. (I love Idaho.)

We were in the midst of giving her our information when a few vacationers stopped. Pretty soon, we had four different groups of people who were willing to help us. One even had a tow rope, and another had a CB.

The men set to work attaching the tow rope.

"So what's the best way to go about doing this?" Dan asked, always the engineer.

"I'm not sure. This is the first time I've ever had to use it," the gentleman said, crouching down by his vehicle's hitch.

Within a matter of minutes, we were out of the snow bank. My liberal side hates to admit it, but I was grateful for SUVs that day, despite all the damage they do to our environment (although, our 4x4 didn't do us much good).

Dan and I shook the vacationers' and recreation worker's hands, thanking them profusely.

"Next time, I won't let him do a U-turn on the highway," I said to our saviors with a nervous laugh and a wave goodbye.

And we were back on our way down Highway 75. The whole ordeal only took forty minutes, all because a handful of friendly northwestern vacationers were willing to stop and help a couple of desperate thirty-somethings.

Dan spent the rest of the day deep in thought, his brow furrowed.

"Don't feel bad," I said. "I do stupid stuff all the time. And nobody treated us like we were stupid. They just acted like getting stuck is par for the course for people who play in the mountains."

I waited. Dan sighed but didn't respond.

"I wasn't very witty or sarcastic," I continued. "In fact, we both stayed surprisingly calm. Maybe I should have been funnier. Maybe I should have made more jokes about being rescued by the 1%."

"Thank you for being a good wife," Dan finally said.

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The Rest of My Life in 2013

My mother used to say, "Whatever you do on January first, you will do everyday of your life for the rest of the year. Choose your activities wisely."

This is the same woman who believed it was bad luck to leave your Christmas decorations up after the first of the year. She also believed that eating black-eyed peas and ham on New Year's Day would bring good luck. When I was in college, she would send me a can of black-eyed peas every year to make sure that this was accomplished.

I still eat black-eyed peas on January first. My husband does too by default. I'm not leaving anything to chance. In the car, when Dan and I see Christmas decorations still up after New Year's Day, we both point at the house and yell, "Bad luck!"

And if what we do on January first determines what we will do for the rest of the year, here is what 2013 has in store for us.

Everyday in 2013, Dan and I will:

Watch Portlandia and Lost, for eight hours straight
I know, I know. Most people resolve to watch less TV and read more. I would love to have that kind of willpower. But Lost is so addicting. And Portlandia is just funny!



Be sick
Yeah, bummer. We both caught a cold at the end of our break. I came down with it December thirty-first. Dan started feeling it January first. Either way, we were both sick on New Year's Day which, according to my mother, means we will be sick everyday for the rest of the year. Now that's something to look forward to. (Please ignore the dangling preposition. I'm being colloquial.)

Play Jeopardy in an extremely competitive manner
Dan and I bought a Jeopardy desk calendar for 2013.

I thought, "A little trivia to start off the morning never hurt anyone."

On January first, Dan left the Jeopardy question on the office desk for me, his earnings already recorded. So we were going to play it that way. I didn't get the first question right.

The next day, I thought I was a shoe in - "Truman Capote's female protagonist in Breakfast at Tiffany's" - until I saw that Dan had already answered it correctly.

I texted Dan at work: "You did not get Holly Golightly!"

He texted back: "I'm smart like that."

The next day though, I pulled ahead of Dan with the answer Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca.

Sunday's Final Jeopardy category was "Business." I knew I didn't know anything about business. Of course, Dan, having a more diverse breadth of knowledge when it comes to useless information, purposely wagered an amount that would put him in the lead, gave the correct answer, and won.

"Don't worry, Becky," he said in mock consolation. "We both start over at zero next week."

Welcome to my life for fifty-one more weeks.

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