Three pizzas from Idaho arrived later than planned but in good shape Wednesday night after traveling nearly 3,000 miles to the remote Bering Sea island of Saint Paul.
Walter Shane said he picked up his large pies at the airport around 8:30 p.m. and had two combination pizzas warming in his oven less than 30 minutes later.A third pizza, with meat and pineapple, was reserved for his wife, Julie.
The Shanes' love of pizza - and their willingness to order out to Anchorage 760 miles to the east, pay freight charges and wait three days for a plane to deliver it - got the attention of a Boise pizza maker after he read the story in a local newspaper.
Joe Levitch was sure he could deliver better.
"We felt bad this guy had to wait forever for his pizza. We felt we could solve his problem," Levitch said by telephone Wednesday from his shop in Boise.
"It just struck us as something that would be a fun one to toy with."
While waiting with his 8-year-old daughter, Martha, for a couple of the pies to reheat, Shane said he knew from the start the whole thing was for publicity.
Did he care?
"I don't mind. He shipped it up, I didn't have to pay a penny," Shane said.
Similar take-out fare from Anchorage would cost about $50, he said, including $23 in air freight.
In all, the pizza delivery from Boise took about 14 hours - longer than the 11 hours Levitch originally planned.
A refueling stop in the Aleutian Islands community of Cold Bay, about 325 miles southeast of Saint Paul, added an extra couple of hours, Shane said.
The pizza looked good but was pretty cold.
But Shane, who knows what he likes, resisted even a taste, preferring to wait until his dinner was properly hot.
Speediness is less important, he said.
"It doesn't really bother me," he said of the three-day wait he once had when his pizza from Anchorage got bumped in favor of passengers.
"It probably would have gotten here a whole lot sooner."
Listeners of radio station KBOI in Boise on Tuesday heard Levitch call Shane on Saint Paul to take his order from a menu he'd faxed earlier.
On Wednesday, Levitch's Flying Pie Pizzeria sent three pizzas and a case of pizza dough for home baking to the Shanes.
At 6:30 a.m., the package was whisked by helicopter to Boise Airport and put aboard an Alaska Airlines jet to Seattle. There it was transferred to a jet bound for Anchorage where a regional commuter airline, Reeve Aleutian Airways, would complete the trip.
Levitch said he could knock 3,660 minutes off the three-day delivery time.
But the manager of Today's Pizza, the Anchorage shop that has sent the Shanes their pizzas in the past, said when she heard of Levitch's claims: "No way can he do better than us."
Sophia Rosen, Today's Pizza manager, said previous delays were caused by a Bush wholesaler who picks up the pizza to take it to the island.
Rosen said her shop is just minutes from Anchorage International Airport and that she could get pizzas delivered to Bush villages in a matter of hours.
"It would take me half an hour and I'll have that pizza on an airplane," she said, adding, "We have better pizza than he does."
Levitch said the airlines and Idaho Helicopters of Boise donated their services to his project.
"Needless to say, it's off the wall," said Greg Witter, spokesman for Seattle-based Alaska Airlines.