Friday,
October 11, 2013
We got up at
2am to get ready to fly home. We left the room a little before 3am and told the
front desk we were checking out and had all of our luggage with us and were
here for the airport shuttle at 3:30am. As I said before Caravan or Marty had
arranged for us to exchange our breakfast voucher for a box breakfast. The desk clerk got
2 insulated souvenir lunch bags and handed them to us. Now this was a nice
touch and we have never had this happen that if your travel plans cause you to
miss an included meal that they give you one to go. Usually if you miss a meal,
you just miss it. While it was a very nice and thoughtful gesture, it wasn’t
too practical.
We walked back and sat at the table and chairs in the business
center and looked in our bags since this was a free 20 minutes or so and Marty
had told us to eat it then as a warning of things to come from experience I
think. Inside we had a bottle of fruit punch (over 3 ounces! Can’t take it with
you through security). Clay drank his. Since it had citric acid, mine was just
left on the table unopened. We each had an Activia yogurt. Mine was strawberry
and 3 oz. so I ate it. Clay’s was blueberry and we discussed if it could go in
one of our liquids bags and go through security. Clay ate it instead of taking
a chance. We each had an apple, a sesame seed bagel, a small granola bar and a
little tub of cream cheese. We discussed if the cream cheese was a gel or
whether it could go through security outside the liquids bags. We also
discussed if the apple could go and how far since we would be crossing a border
today mostly likely in Toronto. We decided since the bags were foil lined we
would probably be pulled over at the x-ray, but we took a chance and put them in
our backpacks anyway. This really should be better thought through and
give a sack that will assuredly make it through airport security for the day
ahead or provide something that can be consumed there in 15 to 20 minutes
onsite. As the woman with us said, it’s nice but all I really want is a hot cup
of coffee right now.
Marty showed up at about 3:10am. This was a shock! We have
never ever seen a tour guide after the farewell dinner. Usually you are on your
own after that. But, Marty came to make sure that we made it on the shuttle
with our luggage and had our sack breakfasts. We were absolutely amazed. I told
Clay that it actually softened my opinion towards her. I still resent that she
withheld critical information from us at various points that diminished our
ability to enjoy and make the most of our time here, but now I could see it in
a new light and that changed everything. I now think it was wrong but from a
well-meaning heart. Now I think she did it because she honestly felt
responsible for each of us and this was a way for her to keep us in her sight.
I thought that was what she was doing before by denying us the information to
independently sightsee and skip those lunches but now I could understand it in
a more kind-hearted light. It is a conundrum, but no one would be up and
dressed and working at 3am if it were not required unless they truly felt it
was important to them personally to do so.
We made it
through airport security without a question. We each took one bite of our
apples at the gate and tossed them anyway because they were mealy. We ate the
bagels with cream cheese and saved the small granola bars for later. Our flight,
Air Canada 603 was full and on time. A waiting plane is the best reason for
trying to take the first flight of the day no matter how early! I had not
realized that we would be caught up in Canadian Thanksgiving traffic today at
the beginning of their long holiday weekend. Poor planning on my part as
Caravan had a trip leaving every other day and I could have easily chosen an
earlier or later date and still traveled in the same time frame. Live and
learn. As Clay says though, he doesn’t foresee any trip to Canada any time
soon. I feel bad though because this poor planning really hurt Mom & Judy!
I knew Canadian Thanksgiving was in mid-October though and I don’t know why I
didn’t think of making sure we’d have no conflicts. Sorry!
We were
quicker through Toronto this time. There were much longer lines with the
holiday traffic but we didn’t have the 45 minute maze walk we had inbound. We
made our connection gate with time to spare. It turns out with lots of time to
spare. They were missing a flight attendant. The first one that arrived was the
sole flight attendant we had inbound on this same small 2x2 jet. I guess it was
because that flight was mostly empty, but today they expected a full flight and
wouldn’t go without 2 attendants. We had to wait for one to be transferred from
the domestic side of the airport, which meant she had to be located and then go
through US customs and immigration and security again to get to our gate.
While
we thought they should have been using this time to gate check our rolling
luggage they didn’t and didn’t mention it as they began boarding. We assumed
that meant either they had changed equipment, hence the need for 2 attendants
or that they were telling people as they presented their boarding passes and
entered the jet way. No one said anything, there was no luggage drop before the
plane door and the attendant at the door said nothing as we all entered. Then
we turned the corner and saw we were on the small plane with the minuscule
overhead bins. It was a nightmare. They never offered to gate check anyone’s
luggage. Not even when we pointed out to our inbound stewardess that the bags
would not fit. You could put one each of regulation size under the seat in
front but not 2. As people stopped boarding and we waited for a gate check
opportunity that we asked for and were promised, Clay put my bag under an empty
row across and in front of ours. Then he moved over there and strapped in. I
stayed in our row by the window. The stewardess who had promised us a gate
check came back up as we waited for bags to be unloaded that had been checked
by people who had then left the gate area as we kept extending our wait by a 15
minute increments and then they started loading Air Canada employees who were
flying standby, a pilot, a stewardess, and a family of five. The family had the
exit row behind us with a small child. Of course, he would not be allowed to
sit there, so the attendant asked the single man across the aisle from me and
me if we would move to the back and the exit row. I declined since my husband
was across the aisle and in front of me. She said that was fine, since so only
really needed 3 seats to get the child and his parents moved from the exit row
and the grandparents could stay back there. So the father and son took the
single man’s row and he left with his suitcase. The mother sat beside me and
complained that I had used all the under seat space. I told her sorry but since
they always gate check rolling bags on this equipment and today they didn’t it
wasn’t my problem to solve. She passed her purse over to her son. They had 5
rolling bags between them as I saw them at the bathrooms in RDU. They had evidently
done what we had done in the back where they left their bags after going to
their ticketed seats. I don’t know what the sole man did who moved back there,
but again it wasn’t my problem to solve. The good news is that they closed the
doors before Clay got displaced with my suitcase! I felt bad for all the people
that were booked and had their bags removed so all those Air Canada employees
could fly. The wife next to me told the attendant how lucky they felt and how
rare it was for her husband to get to use this employment perk. Yeah,
especially on a holiday weekend. Too bad for those paying customers who had
based their plans on relying on Air Canada. We were not happy with Air Canada
at this point and we had chosen them earlier when the US Government was shut
down for a while and it affected air traffic.
It turns out the US Government
shut down again during our trip and Mom had assumed the danger of air traffic
being affected had past. She and Judy got stuck in LaGuardia because she was
wrong. She called last night from a Marriott in NY. She told me that their
flight leaving Halifax was delayed. I am not sure why, but she went to the gate
agent who told her they would miss their LaGuardia connection. He canceled
their booked seats and rebooked them on a later flight. It turns out they
arrived in NY in time to make their original flight and went to the gate to try
to get on it. They were told no because their seats had been resold. Then their
new flight was canceled because they didn’t have air traffic controllers. Delta
told everyone at the gate they were out of luck and on their own and to
complain to their US Representative, I guess. Mom said that she and Judy stayed
and argued for a long time that they were Delta’s problem because the Delta
gate agent had canceled their booked seats. Eventually someone at Delta agreed
and put them up for the night at the airport Marriott and put them on standby
lists for 2 flights on Saturday morning. That is the good news. The bad news is
that those flights were overbooked too and they still don’t have seats booked
on a flight out of LaGuardia. It is Saturday morning at 10:30am and I haven’t
heard from Mom again so I don’t know what their status is. I will post the
outcome here when I learn it. I have my fingers crossed that she hasn’t called
because she is on a plane flying home! Mom & Judy did finally make it home about 24 hours later than expected.
Meanwhile, we
got home about 45 minutes late and were satisfied because we did not have to
make a connection. I don’t know if that was true for everyone onboard flight AC
7974. We went out into a cold drizzly day. It was colder here than it was in
Halifax! But we were happy to be home. As we neared the I-40 intersection I was
amazed at the wildflowers. Clay said they had bloomed sometime in the past 3
weeks before we left so maybe in August. I thought I saw a lot of small
Dahlias!
The treadmill
repairman was scheduled for 4pm today. The treadmill has been broken since
August. He has ordered and tried replacing almost all the electronics in the
LiveStrong treadmill. This is with a purchased extended warranty from Dick’s
Sporting Goods. The repairman is an independent contractor, but still. He has
had almost 3 months to fix it and the parts are delivered in a timely fashion
but if you can’t troubleshoot it and show up for your appointments or make them
with less than a week’s planning, that means the treadmill is just out of
service for months at a time. Not acceptable. At 4:15pm I called him and asked
him what the status was. He had not wanted to make this appointment
until after we returned and wanted me to call him next week. I told him no, that was
unacceptable that we had waited too long and he blamed it on our travel
schedule which he has made it is business to document so he can stretch this
out even longer. So, we made this appointment understanding that if we couldn’t
keep it because of flight delays that we would call him and cancel. I figured
he had already blown us off again. When I called after our appointment time, he
told me that he had programmed an alarm for appointment but that it hadn’t gone
off so he must have done something wrong. But since I reminded him that he
would come when he finished the appointment he was on now and call before he
headed for our house. He called after 6pm and said he would be here within 30
minutes. Sometime after 7pm he arrived and he left sometime after 8pm. It was
killing us because we had been up for a very long and stressful time, but at
least for now the treadmill is finally working.
That is the
end of this trip. Next month is Las Vegas! Stay tuned for the Cirque du Soleil
Vegas marathon.
