Teaching with Tim

The legs of an overturned deck chair are just visible

My Journey Home:

7 PM Saturday, December 20^th: I depart LAX on Alaska 471, the last outbound flight to Seattle that has not been cancelled.

11 PM 12/20: After circling Olympia for an hour, our flight is diverted to Spokane because of snow and”insufficient traction” on the runway at Sea Tac.

12 AM 12/21: We find ourselves on the ground in Spokane (a 5-hour drive from Seattle in good weather). The ground is snow-covered and six other Alaska flights are lined up at the gate, also diverted, also waiting to get in. The captain  kills any hope we had of refueling and heading out to Seattle, telling us  that the weather there has continued to deteriorate (in that chipper-airline-pilot-on-the-PA tone). We wait on the tarmac for an hour.

1 AM 12/21: I de-plane in Spokane. TSA has gone home for the night, so if we leave the gate area we won’t be able to return to it. Six-jets-full of disgruntled passengers are swarming the three Alaska employees on duty in Spokane. The employees seem a little panicked, trying to subdue the crowd by saying that they are just as unhappy that we are on the ground in Spokane as we are. This statement hits a nerve for some. Everyone is shouting questions at them, and one woman repeatedly shrieks “What about monetary compensation? What about monetary compensation?” The Alaska ground manager promises that the Red Cross will arrive with pillows and blankets for us, but this only seems to add to the unruly atmosphere. “No planes are leaving Spokane tonight,” he says again and again.

2 AM 12/21: I abandon the Alaska gate situation. I find my bag and go to the arrival parking zone, which is full of people trying to find hotels and taxis. It’s dark andwindy. The air temperature is well below zero. I jump a Hilton shuttle, though I don’t have a room there yet. I ask the driver to radio and see if there is any vacancy.  He confirms a room for me.  I eat two bananas and two apples off the complimentary fruit table in the lobby, then go to bed feeling like I’ve cheated fate somehow.

7 AM 12/21: I overhear someone at the Hilton’s continental breakfast saying that the airport has added a new Alaska flight at 10 AM out of Spokane. I buy a ticket online and rush to the airport.

11 AM 12/21: I find out that this flight, along with all other Alaska flights out of Spokane that day, has been cancelled because of weather. Another browbeaten Alaska ticket agent over the intercom: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I have no flights out of Spokane today. I have no flights tomorrow. I have no hotel room compensation. I have no flights on other airlines. Do I need to do this Green Eggs and Ham style? Go home! I’m sorry, please go home!”

2 PM 12/21: I have been waiting in line for a refund and to make other travel arrangements for three hours, watching Southwest Airlines shoot off plane after plane, including flights to Seattle. Alaska, for unclear reasons, is unable to do this. I call and hold one of the last Southwest Air tickets out of Spokane for the following day.

3 PM 12/21: I start talking to Mary Ann, the woman in front of me in the refund line. She and her husband Jerry are from Montana, and they have driven to Spokane to in order to catch a flight to Sea Tac and then to Santa Barbara to see their daughter. They offer to give me a ride in their truck to Seattle that day. I happily accept.

8 PM 12/21: Road conditions are terrible. The dash of Jerry’s truck tells us that the battery is not charging. I consult the GPS Liz got me for Christmas, and it tells us that there is a truck stop in three miles.  A trucker looks under our hood, hits the engine casing with his screwdriver a few times, and announces that we have a broken alternator. Inexplicably, he laughs at us a little as he says it. We book two rooms at the Holiday Inn in Moses Lake, Washington.

9 PM 12/21: Dinner at Denny’s with Jerry and Mary Ann. They regale me with stories of their children and their lives. Extremely nice people, and I am eager to please because they are giving me a ride, so I offer no objections to the far-right political views that they wear on their shirtsleeves. 

8 AM 12/22: The mechanic at the Moses Lake Dodge dealership tells us that our alternator is fine–the truck’s computer was just thrown through a loop by weather conditions. We check pass conditions and start driving west again. 

2 PM 12/22: After a pit stop at the Osh Kosh B’Gosh outlet in North Bend to buy clothes for Jerry and Mary Ann’s granddaughter, we arrive in Seattle. I’ve never seen the city quite like this: well over a foot of snow, and everything seems quiet and magical. We pull up to my house, and I invite Jerry and Mary Ann in for lunch with my parents. They stay for a couple hours. Mary Ann tells my mom many of the same stories I heard on the ride over, and Jerry and my Dad chat about microfinance in developing countries.  Their opposing ideologies rub up against one another awkwardly a couple of times, but otherwise they get along famously. We exchange contact information and wish them a warm  farewell–I try to give them money for gas, but they ask me to spend it on my students instead. I’m happy to be home: a blizzard has hit Spokane, and flights aren’t getting out.

In retrospect, I wouldn’t have traveled to Seattle any other way.

Honey in the backyard.

Honey and Sophie like peeing in the snow, eating it, then throwing up

Oreo observes this activity with contempt.