Category: About us

That One Chick #15

When I was a teenager,  coming home from a trip to the Middle East, a friend and I got stranded in Holland for four days. It could have been fun, but in anticipation of actually leaving the country on Saturday morning, we spent all our Dutch money–therefore had no food for that whole time. We had to live at the airport until we could get a flight out.  Being stand-by passengers in a foreign country, we held the same status as charity or non-paying passengers. In other words–we were considered the lowest of the low. Each time we got to the front of the line to get a boarding pass, the agent would say, “Paying customers first. Go to the end of the line.” With this method, we missed every flight out for four days.

It was a pretty strange situation because they had no water facets and you had to pay the janitors a tip just to use the restroom and again, we had no money–none. We had to wait until about 4am for the janitor to leave and then sneak in and drink from the sink facet, using our hands as cups.

By Tuesday morning we were pretty dang hungry so we slipped into the airport restaurant and waited until a fancy looking businessman finished his meal and went out. We rushed over and ate everything that he left behind. Even the parsley garnish tasted wonderful. We somehow pulled it off without being noticed and slipped back out to the airport. It was something at least.

That night when we finally got out and onto a plane headed to New York we were both so hungry and thirsty that when the flight attendant came by with the drink cart and peanuts, we both started to cry.

Cold, clean water never tasted so good.

When I was 16ish, I went with Laurie–my sister to the High Uinta Mountains, on a 20 mile hike with at 40 pound backpack. Or was that a 40 mile hike with a 20 pound backpack? I can’t remember. The truth is inconsequential here. I know it felt like a 60 mile hike with an 80 pound backpack–and so I intend to remember it that way.

Before we left, my dad bought me a pair of “really good” hiking boots. You know…to keep my feet safe. I guess that “really good” meant really, really ugly and stiff and…well, they didn’t exactly go with my outfit. They were dreadful. But I wore them and before we’d gone half way up the hill, I had a grandaddy blister on the back of my heel. We stopped to rest and when I took off my boot to look at it, one of the leaders said he’d “fix” it for me and promptly pulled the whole top off. My scream is still echoing somewhere up in them thar hills–I sense it somehow. So, to say that it was an uncomfortable stroll the rest of the way would be putting it mildly.

We were there in camp three or four days and I tried to walk around barefoot as much as possible to air out the blister so that it would heal faster. It worked like a charm…that is, until the night before we had to hike back out. I was running back from the river to the camp and I accidentally kicked a nailed tent stake. It cut a one inch V shape in the bottom of my foot and bled like a crazy thing. It swelled up so much that I couldn’t lace my boot up the next day. But they stayed on my feet–in fact, I could hardly get my boot off when we got back that night.

It was with a heavy heart that I gave those nasty suckers to Good Will.

Oh, and don’t tell my dad.