Delays and a late night cross country race

Here we sit around 3:30 in the morning Pacific time at San Francisco International Airport. We anticipated being somewhere over the Pacific at this time, but we are currently recovering from a very long walk to visit a robot and earlier evening sprints.

In Kansas, we had experienced some thunderstorms that had also previously rolled through Denver. They caused delays, but we still had to be to the airport at the original time to check bags and to go through security; as we discovered, security does not stick around with delays. It originally appeared that we would not make our connection to San Francisco, which could complicate things since we were meeting Tella's mom there. After further delays, it seemed quite clear that we could not make it. Then, they let us board earlier than angicipated; upon landing, we found out the other flight had been slightly delayed, but only slightly. I volunteered to sprint ahead to try to hold the gate, and Claire followed after. This was the first time that I have actually high-speed run and jogged through the bulk of an airport. As Denver is at altitude, I would eventually get winded and then had to slow down to a very fast walk. Once recovered, I picked it up to a cross country level jog/run until I got winded again. Upon getting there, the gate agents indicated that they could not make any statements about holding a plane. Luckily, either the pilot or the copilot came out and said something about getting this plane moving. I was able to explain our circumstance in a winded way. He asked if the plane I came from had landed because he wasn't sure if the others in my party were on the same plane as me. I was able to tell him that it had and I had run from it. He said that he would then wait so we could get on it. Ben showed up next, followed by Simon sprinting ahead of Rebekah. Eventually, we all ended up there and were able to board, though there was a fair bit of confusion because for some reason we did not show as checked in, even though we had checked in back in Hays. Ultimately, we made a connection that on paper we really should not have made. It was actually a bit of a minor miracle. We had found out before the delays in Hays that our San Francisco flight was delayed by four hours to Tokyo. As such, once we got here, it felt like a relief from a lot of stress. A few of us went exploring to try to find food and ended up finding a robot kiosk. After they messaged the group, several of the rest of us decided to go join. I think the robot creating drinks has been one of the biggest highlights of the trip for Simon so far. However, the robot is a tremendous distance from our gate. After getting almost back to our gate, more people decided to join so we went and pilgrimaged to the robot again.