March 5 — Dog Day Afternoon

March 5, 2022

I am not sure what “Dog Day Afternoon” means other than the fact that it was the title of a movie about a bank robbery. I will not be writing about a bank robbery. I want to tell you about what happened on the afternoon of a “dog day.”

The dog day in question is the day of the ceremonial start of the Iditarod. The trail starts in downtown Anchorage and passes through my neighborhood. It’s an excellent place to watch all the mushers and dog teams go by. They pass by so close that is possible to “high five” the mushers and their passengers. (Note: After today there will NOT be any passengers.)

Today was a PERFECT day to watch a dogsled race. It was not too cold, the trail conditions were good, and it was snowing enough to make the woods look beautiful.

Not sure why I can’t rotate this photo. Will work on it.

After the Iditarod

We went to the airport right after the last dogs ran by. It was snowing even harder by this time.At the airort we learned that our flight (to Seattle) would be 50 minutes late due to a “crew issue.” Translation: one or more crew members were late getting to the airport.

No worries. We had a layover of about 2 hours 15 minutes in Seattle.

Eventually we boarded the plane, only to be informed that there was a “mechanical issue” that would  entail a “short” delay. Translation: not short. By the time they decided we were ready to go the plane needed de-icing and that took another 30 minutes. What with one thing and another, we didn’t get to Seattle until our connecting flight had left. I can’t believe they couldn’t hold the plane for 15 minutes for the 15 passengers on our first flight trying to make that connection. 

We were pretty much on our own at that point. Nobody was waiting for us at the gate to rebook us or even to tell us to run because our connecting flight was waiting for us. We eventually found an open Customer Service desk in a different terminal. We found out we had been rebooked on a flight leaving at 8 am the next morning. Our First Class seats had been magically transformed into seats in Row 31– the very last row, the one right next to the bathrooms. Our luggage would be on the same flight with us tomorrow, but it would not get to go to the hotel with us tonight. At least they gave us vouchers for a decent hotel.

At the hotel we called various Alaska Airlines help numbers until we found one that didn’t tell us the wait was 4 or 5 hours. A very nice customer service agent spent an hour on the phone with us trying to help us get to Florida and she did get us seats in Premium, but middle seats, and not in the same row obviously. By this time, it was after midnight. I guess you could say that our Dog Day Afternoon ended with being Sleepless in Seattle.