The Boston Airport Marathon

In a fit of optimism William and I booked ourselves a 55 minute layover in Boston to catch an international flight to Portugal.  TAP (a discount Portuguese airline) had a killer deal on tickets to Madrid with a stopover in Lisbon at the same time Alaska Airlines had its PFD sale, and the short layover was the only way to take advantage of both, so we took the bait and wagered our whole vacation on that little moment in time.  I’m sure you can see where this is going.

Everything was going perfectly, the Alaska Airlines flight was only delayed a few minutes, it was landing in the same terminal as the Portugal flight was leaving from, and the wonderful flight attendants let us get off before everyone else.  We were balls of nervous energy, and went sprinting through the Boston airport, following signs for gate C17. But the signs just kept going, and going, and going through hallways, up and down stairs, and eventually OUT of a security check point!  How could gates be in the same terminal and still be so far apart?! Our naive little Alaskan minds had not concieved of such a complication.

We hurried through TSA explaining that our flight was already boarding, were ushered to the shortest line, threw our bags on the conveyor belt and tried to wait patiently for them to come out the other side.  But the belt stopped...and stopped again...and again...they pulled ALL of our bags off to be inspected. The same bags that had gone through TSA once already in Anchorage.

We made a split second decision that William would wait with the bags and I would run to the gate to tell them not to leave without us.  It was another half mile sprint to the C17 gate, and they were announcing the final boarding call. Sweating and sputtering I explained to the very very nice gate agents what was going on, and that William would be on his way with our bags in minutes.  Surely it would only take minutes.

Ten minutes later William came careening through the airport, extra bags in tow and I felt a celebratory wave of relief wash over me until I noticed he was missing my backpack.  Which had my passport in it. He thought I had it.

I hurried back to TSA with one of the gate agents thinking my pack would be leaning up against a pillar somewhere waiting for me to apologize and grab it.  But no. When we got there it was in line to be inspected still. And since I had “abandoned” it TSA moved it to the back of the line. A new TSA employee was training on the line that was inspecting all of the bags in front of mine, and he was moving SLOW.  Infuriatingly slow. The gate agent and I were explaining our emergency and how a whole plane of people were waiting on them examining my bag, but they could not under any circumstances change the order of the bags. Nor could they be bothered to hurry. The bag before mine contained 30 individual bags of CAT FOOD and they had to check every single one for drugs or bomb dust or whatever they were looking for.  After 20 MORE minutes it was my bag’s turn (so now it’s 30 minutes after final boarding call). The new TSA employee struggled to understand which side of my backpack was the top and spent precious moments trying to unzip the bottom of the bag until I could no longer stand it, and reached over the glass, grabbed my bag, and turned it over for him. I thought I might get arrested for that, but I figured my story would garner sympathy from any judge and maybe even help to change TSA for the better.  He finally finished checking my bag. My sandals were the item in question for an unknowable reason. The extremely patient gate agent told me to run as fast as I could back to the gate, they let me on the plane without checking my boarding pass, and sat me next to William.

We made it.  The vacation was still on.  That was the ONLY walking/running I did that day and my phone says it was 2.5 miles.