- Ben

Fun in the Midnight Sun
Ben Hendler

       Perseverance. To most people it means it means to keep going, but to some it may mean being pushed in a shopping cart. Before traveling to Alaska in 2007, Britta Seifert tore her ACL while playing a game of ultimate frisbee. This happened in May, only one month before she traveled to Alaska. “The first thing I thought after having surgery was that I wouldn’t be able to go to Alaska. It ended up that I was able to come, and the reason that I was able to come was because a lot of the people, Ishtar (Mr. Rosene), my dad, all of the drivers, all of the junior leaders, and all of the participants, on the trip really helped me out,” Britta said.
“What was really cool was that people could really come together on the trip,” Britta said. People on the trip helped Britta with anything from carrying her bags to washing her dished. Throughout the trip, Britta was on crutches and doing her rehabilitation exercises for her leg.  She was very limited in what she could do. “The hardest days of the trip for me were the days when the group would go up the mountains because that was always such a great experience; it was really wonderful to see everyone come down from the mountain so excited. But I did feel like I was missing a big part of the trip by not being up there [on top of the mountain] with everyone,” Britta said.
Not being able to run in the Midnight Sun Run 10K also made Britta sad. “It was another thing that I thought I was going to miss,” said Britta.  The Midnight Sun run is a race that goes on in Fairbanks, Alaska every year.  It occurs around the summer solstice, when Fairbanks has the most sunlight of the year, which happens to be all day long. The race is a standard ten-kilometer race that goes through the local Fairbanks area.
It turns out Britta would be entered in the race after all. What Britta’s friends decided to do was one of a kind. “It was such an awesome thing that my friends did,” said Britta.  Gabby Fratta and Sam Howard [Britta’s friends] retrieved a shopping cart from a local thrift store, with permission of course. They put Britta in the shopping cart, the race started, and away they went.  “It was really fun. In the race we got a lot of funny looks from people. Some people yelled at me to get out and run. I had a sign on the cart that said ‘Injured runner,’” Britta said. The three ended up finishing the race in a not-to-shabby-for-being-pushed-in-a-shopping-cart time. 
All in all, Britta thought it to be a great experience.  “It was really exciting because I had missed the mountain days and I kind of knew what it felt like to miss out on stuff. To be able to finish the race with the rest of the group was really exciting,” Britta said.  Not many other people, if anyone, can say they have had this kind of fun in the Midnight Sun.