By Cool J
Our flight itinerary took us from Minneapolis to Chicago, then Chicago to Copenhagen (Denmark), and then a short flight from Copenhagen to Gothenburg, Sweden.
Though we left on Wednesday evening, it wasn’t going to be until “Thursday” local time that we arrived at our final destination. Due to the time difference, I figured that Thursday was going to be a rest day in terms of running.
Little did I know, I would indeed be running that day- through the Copenhagen airport, that is!
It was our own fault- we listened to the flight attendant’s instruction to catch our Gothenburg flight at gate A. Our flight from Copenhagen had been delayed, so we only had a few minutes to make it to the gate. We sprinted off in the direction of Gate A as fast as our jet-lagged legs could take us.
Zipping around crowds, we arrived breathless and a bit sweaty at Gate A. And of course Gate A was the incorrect gate for our flight. Had we merely checked the gate information, we would have known that our plane actually had been moved to Gate D, which was on the farthest possible other side of the Copenhagen airport…quite close to where we had just come from.
We could hear our flight being called- the flight was boarding, and the gates would be closing shortly.
We quickly debated what to do- could we possibly make it? We had already sprinted the entire airport to get to Gate A, and now we had to run to the other side. Honestly, it had to be over a mile away!
The decision was made. I took the D-man’s bags, and sent him off through the crowds.
Sometimes it’s frustrating that he is so much faster than me. As he mentioned in a past guest post, I sometimes get frustrated with myself when running with him (read about it here), but this was not one of those times. He sprinted back to Gate D, weaving through the massive crowds, as I slowly jogged behind him with our carry-on luggage.
Thanks to the D-man’s speed, he was able to make it to the gate, and hold our flight until I came waddling up behind. Sweating profusely at this point, we ran outside to the stairs to our tiny connecting plane, found our seats, and sat there catching our breath….
“Thank god you’re a runner,” I said.
