Coming up on four years ago, I needed to attend a one week residency for school. Since I was attending an online University, I had to travel to Minneapolis, Minnesota for this residency. My mom has a tradition of taking the kids for a week every summer, so we decided it would work out perfectly for me to attend a summer residency so that my mom could take the kids. Matt stayed home and worked during that time period.
We had waited too long to buy my plane ticket, and I ended up flying south to Arizona in order to catch a flight up and over to Minnesota. Being very nervous about the residency, I did not sleep well the night before. I don't usually sleep on a flight, but I managed to fall asleep on my way to Phoenix. The problem with this is that I was in a deep sleep when the plane landed, so I woke up groggy. When I got off the plane, I pulled out my ticket to my connecting flight to tell me how long I had before the flight left. I looked at my watch, and it said I had five minutes before my flight was supposed to leave. How could they do this to me? They had already been boarding for probably 20 minutes.
I decided I needed to at least try to make the connection, even though it wasn't likely to happen. I put my ear buds in and turned on my ipod shuffle. I had my purse over one shoulder, my carry on with wheels pulling behind me with that arm, and the book I was reading in the other hand. I couldn't run since there were too many people around, but as I turned the corner, I reached the area that is a huge straight way with the two rolling sections down the sides and open space between. This was my chance to really book it.
I thought to myself, "Self, I have been doing a lot of running and a great running song just came on my ipod. I'm wearing my running shoes, now is my chance to make good time." So I took off running. Wide open space and I was SO proud of myself. I got in a good groove with my music and I was really cooking. Then all of a sudden, my back foot bumped the wheel of the carry on I was dragging. I....was...going.....d...O....w.....N. It was like it happened in slow motion. Head over heels, I rolled. Somehow the luggage kept up with me. My book remained in my arm and all I could hear over the top of my music was a huge gasp of breath from every direction. To my left were several pilots on the rolling thing, to my right was a few regular passengers on the rolling thing. Nobody was nearby to come to my rescue. But I didn't need rescuing. After my roll I landed on my feet. In that moment I heard someone say, "Are you okay?" I responded with two thumbs up, "I'm OKAy!" And I kept running!
Oh, I was SO embarrassed, I had to get out of there fast. My knee caps took the brunt of my fall and they hurt SO BADLY. But I didn't care. I finally stopped running when I reached the other end of that wide open space. My connecting flight was supposed to be the first one on the left. I walked over to the counter, noticing there weren't many people around and figuring the flight had just left. I handed the lady my ticket and asked, "Did my flight just leave?" I was huffing and puffing and in a lot of pain.
She looked at the ticket and looked at me funny and said, "Your flight leaves in an hour, we'll be boarding in about half an hour." You've got to be kidding me. I had changed time zones and didn't even know it. I would think they would have announced that when we landed, but NO. That's what I get for falling asleep on the airplane during a short flight. How embarrassing!
As it all turns out, I survived residency, with a great deal of pain in my knees. And it took my knees a full six months to heal before I could run for exercise. If you read my previous blog post about sports bras, you may laugh and take note that it's rather obvious I haven't been exercising regularly. Hmm, I wonder why! Good thing my mother didn't name me Grace!
