written Sunday night (12/21/08)
We awoke to a clear, beautiful day on Saturday morning in Seattle, but the weather forecast predicted a rather substantial winter storm to blow in around 3 pm that afternoon, exactly when our plane was to take off. We arrived at the airport around 11:45 am, hoping to connect with Seth’s sister, Katie, who was to have landed in Seattle that morning, en route to Anchorage from Japan. By the time she arrived in Seattle, she had been traveling by bus, hanging out in Tokyo and flying on a plane, all for over 24 hours, and her scheduled flight out of Seattle wasn’t until about 10 pm that night. At 12:15 we learned that she had been on the stand-by list for the 12 o’clock flight, but we couldn’t know for sure if she had made it on. We got all checked in and decided to get on the stand-by list for the 2 pm flight, hoping to get out a bit earlier and miss the storm. We were about 25th on the list, however, and didn’t make it. So, we stuck with our 3 pm flight. As we still could not locate Katie, our hopes were high that she had made the noon flight.
During the course of the day, we became aware of many folks who were stuck in Seattle because they had missed earlier connections and were now being bumped from stand-by list to stand-by list, or who could not get a plane to their final destination because of extreme weather where they were trying to go. One lady in our hotel lobby had been there since Wednesday afternoon and was just trying to get across the state of Washington to Spokane. I don’t think Saturday was her lucky day either. Another couple at the airport said that they had left their home at 8 am on Friday morning and had spent the night in the Boston airport. Now they were in Seattle trying to make their way to Fairbanks, AK. They were on the stand-by lists, but I kinda doubt they made it out on Saturday either, as their tickets weren’t until around 10 pm, and I’m pretty sure those flights got canceled. We were very thankful our tickets were for no later than they were, but as the afternoon wore on, I began to wonder if even our flight would take off.
Our plane was a bit late in arriving, and then its passengers had to unload, and then they had to replace a circuit board on the plane, and then it was finally our turn to get on. By now, the snow had started falling and there were no signs left of the clear morning we had seen out of our hotel windows. I began to wonder at what point do they begin to cancel flights because of weather? We got on around 4 pm and then they had to spray down the plane with deicing stuff. We finally took off at 4:30 pm. Even though our traveling had been rather non-stressful up until the last couple of hours before take-off, flying is not my favorite thing to do, and so it felt good to release a few tears in the first few minutes of our flight. I was worried that I would somehow make Ethan feel scared, but he was so sweet. He and Seth held my hand and when I apologized later to Ethan for crying, he said that he hadn’t even noticed and gave me a big hug. Later, I was able to be a comfort to him, as he decided he didn’t really like looking out the dark window to see the city lights below, which I actually enjoy, because it means we’re nearly there!
The flight was actually quite smooth, with a few minor bumps here and there. The fasten seat-belt sign was able to be turned off for quite a while, and I got up to use the itty bitty bathroom twice. I had planned on getting out my laptop to do some writing, but I was just too nervous to type. I read a book and either listened to Ethan’s movie (Ratatouille) or to Phil Wickham. The flight was barely over 3 hours long and we got to our gate at about 6:40 pm, AK time. The temp was about 18 degrees, which was not a huge shock to us as we had just completed a week of freezing temps at home. We were so grateful to get off the rather warm plane and be greeted by family members that we didn’t care about the temperature!
Fortunately, Katie had made it on the noon flight from Seattle! She was a long way down on the stand-by list, but because another plane had been delayed coming into Seattle and many of those passengers were missing that 12 o’clock connection, a large number of stand-by seats had opened up and she was able to make it home. If she had not made that flight, she would probably still be in Seattle, as we learned this morning that Alaska Airlines had canceled 47 of its flights on the West Coast on Saturday! I think ours may have been one of the last ones out of Seattle that day.
The storm in Washington and Oregon certainly grew stronger after we left. Apparently, our area received nearly 10 inches of snow on Saturday night! Oh, how I would have loved to have seen that! That’s just unheard of for us! Of course, I’m very thankful we made it to Anchorage with relatively little trouble. We were in a protected little traveling pocket…praise God! But it is a tiny bit disappointing to have missed out on record breaking snowfall at our home. I’ll just have to hope it does it again someday!
Happy New Year!
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