Today’s find: Connections

Fairbanks is remote, I discovered, and Delta is indifferent.

I obtained these enlightening insights on the cusp of the summer solstice, the very day we’d set to begin a vacation trip more than two years in the planning.

Two years of delicious anticipation…that very nearly went “poof” in a gate area of the airport in St. Louis. (Not that there’s anything wrong with St. Louis, but it’s my native place – so I don’t typically expect mighty deeds to occur here.)

There we sat, my four traveling companions and I, all settled in place well ahead of our scheduled departure time…for a flight that would take us to Minneapolis…to meet up with a connecting flight to Fairbanks.

We had in fact been fretting about that connection for a good many months. Only about 90 minutes separated our scheduled arrival and the departure in the Twin Cities: “Should be plenty of time,” said our travel agent…but during the planning months we wondered and fretted amongst ourselves all the same.

And then…there at the gate…on the solstice…our fears began to materialize. Delta the Indifferent announced first one delay, then another, in our initial flight. Almost every bit of our 90-minute cushion had just vanished before we’d ever stepped on a plane.

Unhelpfully, Delta’s mobile app started sending AI notices encouraging us to rebook for the next day. Gerri, searching for actual intelligence, went to the Gate Agent seeking insight about the status of our second flight. No dice: “Our systems are down.”

A flurry of phone calls ensued – first to our travel agent, then to the cruise line who’d sold us the Alaskan land-sea tour. It was truly remarkable watching Gerri swing into action – juggling phone numbers and birthdates and booking numbers for five different people, all in an attempt to sort our options should we miss connections in Minneapolis.

Which is about when I realized that Fairbanks is remote. It’s way up in Alaska, not quite to Siberia, but close … and therefore not all that readily accessible by plane. Miss your flight one day, good luck finding another – especially for five people traveling at the height of the tourist season.

Even the cruise line agents seemed to be throwing up their hands at our dilemma: “We’ll send an email to our Fairbanks colleagues, letting them know that you might be late.” An email. Seriously.

At some point, somebody said, “Just get on the plane to Minneapolis and see what happens.” And I guess that makes sense, in an “airline-think” kind of way: Go far away from home, but nowhere near Alaska. You might just get lucky.

So we got on the plane, and got the first bit of hopeful news we’d had all day. The captain, apologizing for the late start, said there’d been weather delays that caused “trickle-down issues” across the Delta system.

“Well,” thought I, “if bad weather got us into this mess, maybe bad weather can get us out of it, too.”  So I started praying for that tender mercy – thunderstorms that might keep our Fairbanks-bound plane on the ground a bit longer in Minneapolis…long enough for us to make the connection to the land of the Midnight Sun: “Cmon, Angel Armies … do me a solid.” I even added a promise to my prayer: “Get us on that plane, and I will write about it. I will look for a chance to tell the story…that gives God the glory…for our good fortune.”

To shorten a story that’s already gone on too long, here’s what we saw out the window when we landed in Minneapolis:

Touching down, we learn that the Fairbanks flight has in fact been delayed a bit, perhaps just-enough-for-us-to-make-it. So we shuffle/hustle down the concourse, sending our youngest-and-fittest member on ahead to plead our case. Silently, the rest of us pray along with the Psalmist, “Our eyes are fixed on the Lord, pleading for his mercy.”

And in the end, we gain another insight: The Lord’s mercy on this day (and really every day) is as deep and wide and long as the sunlight in Fairbanks at solstice.

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS