Shoreline Shuffle

Great adventures can include great challenges, but the final reward is often worth the effort involved.

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After getting up at 3:45 a.m. to catch my 7:45 a.m. flight and still almost missing it, our trip was off to a rocky start. We left the house about a half hour later than planned and caught some rush hour traffic on the way to DIA (Denver International Airport).

"I can't check your bags, you're too late," the guy at Delta's baggage check told us. "No, wait, here it goes," he said as he looked up from his computer screen. "You're in luck."

The group had planned to spend two days camping on Oak Island, but uncommon wind and whitecaps engulfed Lake Superior from shore to shore. The last jaunt was deceivingly rough.

Call it luck, call it timing, but if we had been two minutes later we wouldn't have made our flight. This past summer we were headed to  the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore (Wisconsin) on Lake Superior for a kayaking adventure.

As we made our way through Security, I realized I had a water bottle I needed to take with me. I looked up at my buddy Aiden and explained that we had to chug the thing before the end of the line. So chug we did. And as we crept through the Security line, I watched the clock pasted to the wall and once again wasn't sure we'd make it in time.

Terminal C, of course, is the farthest away. When the tram finally stopped, I sent Aiden sprinting to our gate to keep it open. We had five minutes at this point. As I rushed up the escalator and darted through strollers and travelers, I zig-zagged my way in my wheelchair to our gate, C38.

Aiden was standing there out of breath, but nobody else was there. The door to the Jetway was still open and the plane was still attached, so I knew we had a chance.

A flight attendant arrived promptly to show us our way down: "We were looking for you two." We joked around as we boarded, the very last.

As the flight began to depart, I quickly realized I had another problem on my hands. In all the racing around to catch the flight, I never got a chance to use the restroom. Now, I sat there as the coffee and half a water bottle I just chugged streamed its way through my body. My bladder started signaling to me, but there was no way  to get out of my seat during takeoff. Instead, I was able to score a few full eight-ounce  water bottles from the flight attendant, and once again we had to chug. Three bottles later, Aiden no longer had to worry about dehydration and I could finally relax and "enjoy the flight."

That's what friends are for—right?

Now, let's go do some kayaking....

Check out the complete article in the January 2012 issue of S'NS

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