Let’s start with the fact that it has been 382 days since I’ve been in an Uber, ridden on a CTA bus or train, or boarded an airplane. This, coming from someone who spent 2019 flying more than 110,000 miles for work and for fun. Which is not to say that Damon and I have been completely homebound for the past year – we’ve just been careful, opting to road trip and camp a little bit closer to home rather than fly. And Hallelujah, that is about to change.
It is not that I was worried about flying – I’ve done the
research and believe that flying is about as safe, if not safer, than going to
the grocery store. I guess the best way
to explain it is that Covid put a weight on my life this past year and I have
found it easier to just stay home rather than expend the energy to figure out
how to do things outside of the bubble I’ve lived in for the past 12 months. With vaccines around the corner for all of us
(no, we have not been vaccinated yet), and the end (hopefully) in sight, we are
ready to get out and start moving again!
It is spring break, and like most normal people who are just
coming out of a slightly brutal winter, we decided to head for warm weather,
pina coladas, and sandy beaches. Ha ha,
no we didn’t. We are idiots heading to
Alaska in the middle of winter. Why
Alaska? It is simple. I have been on a quest to see the Northern
Lights for about a decade. For a
Midwesterner, that is not a simple task because there are so many things that
come into play when hunting for the lights – being in the “ring”, KP value,
cloud cover, ambient light… Although my
mom likes to tell me regularly, “isn’t it funny how you are always looking for
the Northern Lights and Izzie – my niece – was at camp and they just got to see
them!” Yeah, mom. I do find that hilarious.
Thanks to a friend who lives in Fairbanks, I learned that
the spring solstice (March 21) is the perfect time to see the lights. Upon further research, I learned that if you
visit area in March and you spend 3 nights out hunting for the lights – meaning
spending from 10pm-2am parked in the dark, generally in sub-zero temperatures -
there is a 100% chance you will freeze your ass off, but there is also a 90%
chance you will see the Northern Lights.
I was sold and Damon didn’t take much convincing. We opted for 7 nights in Fairbanks, giving us,
by my calculations 90% + 90% + 30% = a 210% chance of seeing the Northern
Lights. New math.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been monitoring four different iPhone
aurora apps, the Fairbanks cloud cover prediction website, weather apps, watching
YouTube videos and researching the “Google” to maximize our chances. I gave up on the wind speeds, phases of the
moon and other meteorological metrics because I didn’t want to go
overboard. For the past three nights,
every time I woke up I checked the apps to see if the lights were visible in
Fairbanks because that has absolutely no predictive value but makes me feel
like I’m doing something to increase our odds.
If you see the Northern Lights but don’t have a National
Geographic quality photo to commemorate the sighting, did you really see
them? Damon bought me a DLSR camera
about 10 years ago. While taking
multiple classes in person and on-line over the years, I still have only ever
used the auto setting because, much like meteorological metrics and iTunes, I
just don’t get it. So, for the past two
weeks, I’ve spent hours watching camera videos and taking notes, writing down
preferred settings, testing and making sure I know where all the buttons are. I’ll be the one with the laminated
instruction sheet in -15 degree weather trying to set my shutter speed and
ISO. Or I’ll be sitting in a warm car
while Damon does it. Either we aim to
have proof of success.
Packing for this trip has been interesting. By day, the plan is to work from home or go sled-dog
mushing and by night the plan is to hunt for the lights. That means a combination of work acceptable
shirts for top half and sweatpants for bottom half, plus every possible layer I
can put on for outdoor and overnight activities. I have lithium batteries that power my boot
insoles, my mittens and my vest (4 batteries, 2 chargers), plus instant heat
packs for boots and mittens, plus, yes, our BRIGHT YELLOW Antarctica jackets
that everyone makes fun of, plus long underwear, fleece sweat pants, wind proof
ski pants, thick wool socks, hats, balaclava, scarf, boots, turtlenecks,
fleece, hooded sweatshirt… try getting that into one suitcase. At Damon’s insistence, I had to reduce what I
was bringing, so I took out one pair of long underwear and added another
suitcase.
And so the day finally arrived. We were packed and ready to go. Opened the Uber app to get us to the airport
and holy heck – prices have gone up in the past year! What used to be a $30 ride to O’Hare is now $66. Nope.
We are cheap. Public
transportation for us! We dragged our 90
pounds of crap 2 blocks to the bus stop and off we went. The bus was fine – only a few people on, all
masked up. The train was fine – also
relatively not crowded with everyone masked up.
We got to the airport and the hallways were empty, the luggage carousel
area was empty, and the escalator was empty, until we got to ground level.
I kid you not, there were 12 billion people in the ticketing
area. It was so packed that we could barely
get off the escalator because no one could move. It was wall to wall people and you literally
had to shove your way through the mass of people. If you’ve ever wondered, yes, Spring Break
trumps Pandemic – even in Illinois. Thankfully,
I still have my 1K status despite the lack of flying in 2020, so we were able
to get checked in and through security quickly.
With only 7 minutes until we started boarding, no time to get infected
in the sit-down areas. We walked to the
gate and got right on the plane. My
favorite plane – the 777-wide body.
I used some credits to bid on an upgrade and we lucked
out. While we didn’t get to sit near
each other, having a completely private pod more than 6’ from the nearest mouth
breather was a nice way to ease back into flying. Our first leg to Denver was uneventful – sort
of felt like home again – luckily a perfectly smooth flight. We had a super short layover in Denver and
basically walked to the new gate and got right on the flight to Anchorage. Only I got the upgrade on this leg, so we did
split up for the 5-hour leg. Damon has
always made fun of (been jealous of?) the fact that no matter where we are in
the world or when, it is almost inevitable that I will bump into someone I
know. About 3 hours into the flight,
keeping in mind that I’m fully masked, I hear “Donna? Donna?” from the person sitting next to me
(separated by the aisle). Turns out that
a family friend, Mayer, has been sitting right next to me, had seen my post on
FB this morning that we were going to Alaska, noticed the yellow jackets, and
figured it had to be me sitting by him.
Small world!
While I get the feeling that, ironically, I’m one of the
last people to get on a plane since Covid, I’ll put in my $.02. Yes, masks are kind of a bummer; yes, you are
sitting very close to other people and it is just a really weird feeling given
how much we’ve been avoiding contact for the past year, and yes, I could
complain about the lack of decent food.
But for the most part, it was really no big deal and not very different
from normal days of flying. It will be
interesting to see how long it takes the world to get over the paranoia of
being around other people.
This is turning into a super long blog post given that we
haven’t done anything yet, but I miss travelling and I miss writing!
***
Editor’s Note – while I often write a day or two after
events have unfolded, everything written up to this point was written on Friday
before we got off the plane in Anchorage.
Everything following was written on Sunday & Monday.
***
My mother was diagnosed with Covid about 2 ½ weeks ago. We don’t know how or where or when she got
it. We think it was just before she
received her second vaccine shot. The
irony. We missed the initial symptoms
because they were masked by what we thought were side effects of the
vaccine. In any case, when she was
finally diagnosed, her symptoms included extreme coughing, fever, nausea, brain
fog and vomiting. The hospital deemed
her not sick enough to be admitted, but we felt she was too symptomatic to stay
alone, so we admitted her to a facility that would be able to monitor her
symptoms and administer basic medications 24/7.
After a few bad days with a horrible cough, she started to improve and after
about a week, the facility said that she would be released at the 2-week mark (3
weeks after onset of symptoms) to ensure she was no longer contagious. With that in mind and the encouragement of my
mother, Damon and I left for Alaska, expecting her to be home later this week, out
of the woods, to finish her recuperation.
***
We landed in Anchorage on Friday afternoon/early evening and
had a 5-hour layover. I called my mom to
check in and we talked for a while about the trip and aurora predictions for
that night, the flight, etc. Other than
complaining of some slight stomach pain, which we all attributed to irregular
eating and normal GI distress, she was totally fine and looking forward to going
home. Damon and I took a taxi into
downtown Anchorage, had some dinner, and Uber’d back for our flight. My friend Elaine and her sister Chris, coming
from San Francisco & San Diego, were supposed to meet us in the airport and
we were all on the same flight to Fairbanks.
Their flight was delayed and while they had enough time to make the
flight, they had issues with their luggage and couldn’t get their luggage
re-checked in time, and with policies in place ensuring that people are not separated
from their luggage, they ended up missing the flight by less than 5 minutes and
had to stay in Anchorage while we flew to Fairbanks.
We got to Fairbanks and picked up our rental car, and that
was when I got a call from my sister stating that my mom had been admitted to
the emergency room because she had passed out from stomach pain and possibly
hit her head. Abbreviating several hours
of information, within a fairly short period of time, we learned that she had a
massive bleed in her upper intestinal tract and was losing blood quickly. She had been taking blood thinners, an approved
treatment for Covid to avoid blood clots, and that was exacerbating the bleeding. The doctors reversed the blood thinner and she
was given blood infusions before being taken to Radiology where they performed a
several hour procedure to attempt to repair the bleed without invasive surgery. If that was unsuccessful, she would be take
to surgery, which was a last resort given the very high mortality rate of
patients undergoing surgery within 6 weeks of having Covid. We couldn’t talk to her and visitors are not allowed
in the hospital. The doctors “prepared
us”.
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