notes from a day spent in transit
January 3, 2010
A 4am wake up call is especially brutal when you sleep the sleep of the elderly, logging nearly as much lying-awake-time as sleep-time. Cold Indian restaurant leftovers don’t go down too badly at 4:30am but next time I’ll skip the apple I ate afterwards. Talk about queasy making.
A woman behind me in the Air Canada check in line was annoying the hell out of me with her chirpy, pushy efficiency writing out those little name tags for all of her and her husband’s bags. At one point her husband made a growly noise and then tore up and threw out something that I think was the bag tags she had just made for him. Three seconds later she was at the counter again, doggedly filling out tags.
I guess you don’t have to take off your shoes at security when flying within Canada. How come nobody told me that last time?
Inside security, Chipper Lady’s husband lost his two dollar coin in the pop machine. She told him to press every button for every kind of pop, to press the money return button again, to press every button AGAIN, then said “are you sure you put your toonie in?” (huh?). The husband then flew into a rage, slamming on the machine and shouting “fucking piece of shit! fucking piece of shit!”. Oddly enough, airport security didn’t say squat to the guy about his behaviour. And he didn’t get his pop, or his two dollars back. I hoped they weren’t going to be on my plane.
On the plane I heard another woman talking about how she hoped “those Americans” wouldn’t be on our plane. Meaning Mr Rage, I guess, in that charming way some people have of assuming anybody who’s a jackass must be American. I sort of doubt he was (American, I mean: he was clearly a jackass). He was flying from London to Toronto, after all, and his wife said “toonie” without any sort of emphasis to indicate it was a novelty to her. Anyway, Mr Rage and Chipper Lady WERE on our plane, but they were drowned out by the engine noise, so, yay.
The plane to North Bay had only ten passengers on it, and loads of empty seats. Fortunately none of the other people were significant to me in any way and we did not wind up back on the Island. Phew.
Our plane out of London was so slow to take off that turnaround time in Toronto was only fifteen minutes instead of an hour. Guess what that means? My luggage did not make its connecting flight on time. Whee! This is my first ever experience with Delayed or Missing Luggage. Next flight from Toronto gets here at 3:30 this afternoon, so here’s hoping.
Here is a picture of Lake Nipissing from the plane:
It’s frozen!
There was a young woman from my plane (with stringy hair, giant floppy dread-hat and hippie shawl) standing talking to the people who were picking her up (parents?) while we waited for our bags that didn’t arrive; she said something about being served chili with brown rice (yup, hippie food) and the woman (mom) wrinkled her nose magnificently, drawing up both corners of her mouth up Billy Idol style at once (I had no idea it was even possible to do such a thing with a mouth) and said, “What? Chili on RICE?” like it was Just the Craziest Thing Ever. Heh. Awesome.
I have always eaten chili on rice, by the way. I guess that makes me a HIPPIE. Too bad my patchouli oil is currently lost somewhere with my baggage.
In the checkout line at Zellers later, feeling as if I was struggling to stay awake after a long, long day, I caught sight of a digital clock over the cashier’s shoulder. 9:50am, people. The realization was nearly enough to make me fall asleep standing right there. Also, I blame the fatigue for making me not think to get a toothbrush or underpants, so worst case scenario is I’ll be teaching my first class at Nipissing in the grubby clothes I traveled AND slept in! First impressions FTW.
The view out the front window of my new temporary home. Yup, there’s a portajohn across the street. Could come in handy!
Posted by jodi on January 3, 2010 at 2.44pm
