Karma

If you follow our blog you read about the hassles we had flying down to Mexico. They were a bit nerve racking, but the results were for the best. Most of the problems we encountered were out of our circle of control. I try to look at happenings with an eye on how they fit into the circles of control that are in our lives. If the event is something we have no control over, I try not to let it get to me and cause me stress. The events during our flight down were not controllable, so why worry! (Yes I was stressed, how can you not!)

There were other events prior to our departure that were also out of our circle of control, that once they were put in place, proved to turn out very lucky. Linda purchased our plane tickets back in February. We made our final arrangement to stay at the house in Melaque, our friends Don and Caroline confirmed to join us and all the details fell together.

As the months past our travel agent checked on our tickets and found that the direct flight from Spokane to Los Angles had been canceled. Alaska was no longer offering a direct flight out of Spokane to LAX and we would have to fly to Seattle via Horizon Air. Our travel agent worked with the airlines and got things arranged but the only way we would be able to work it out was to take a flight that arrived late in Seattle and stay overnight there. This would be an inconvenience and because of this we were given a free room for the night at a hotel near the airport.

Then as our agent tried to book the flights we found that even though we had started the arrangement in February, when they canceled our tickets we were not given any sort of priority for booking flights through Seattle. The agent worked hard but found that the only guaranteed flights would be leaving two days earlier then when we were planning to leave. This meant that Linda had to get more days off work and that we would need one more night at our house in Melaque.

Again everyone went to work. I got my days off, Linda wrote a letter to the superintendant and was give the okay to take the days, and we contacted the owner of the house, Martha, and found that it was available for that time. In fact, when Linda told Martha the story about our ticket problems she did not charge us for that early night at the place. So if you are keeping track, which is one night at a hotel and one night at the house free!

As soon as we confirmed that we could leave early, our travel agent went ahead and started dealing with the airlines. She booked us on the early flights and in doing so was able to get us two complimentary round trip tickets to anywhere Alaska flies, all this because of the hassles we were put through. Add two round trip tickets worth an average of $600 each to the toke board.

Everything that went wrong was set right. We actually were not inconvenienced by the results and we received some very good paybacks. But wait, it does not stop there. If you have been following the weather in Coeur d'Alene you have noticed the horrible storm that moved into the area dropping up to 25 inches of snow on the ground. This storm closed schools, the college, roads, and yes the airport.

Our original tickets were booked for December 18, 2008. If those tickets were still good, we would not have been able to fly out that day, the airport was closed.

Linda and I have always believed in Karma of some type. We call it River Karma. If you do good while on the river, good will be returned to you. We're not sure where or when we did a good thing to get us down here, but we are grateful and will keep on the lookout for ways to "pay it forward."