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Cool luggage…

“No matter how cool your luggage is, it can’t be placed near the emergency exits.”

 

– Safety video on TAP plane from London to Lisbon

 

 

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Clouds

Clouds…just because I thought they were really beautiful…

(These were taken while heading north and then north-east out of Vancouver, along the BC coastline and then inland over Northern BC.)

 

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About the Seat Scramble…

(This almost feels like a Seinfeld story, the story about nothing, and yet it really caused a lot of people a lot of anxiety for a while!)

OK, so, we go to check in with Air Canada pretty much as soon as the “You can check in now” email arrives on the morning of our flight, and discover, to our slight shock and lots of dismay, that we have been reassigned to seats that are not together. Well, more accurately, I was reassigned to a different seat that was no longer beside Jeff’s.

Uh oh…

So we’re heading to the airport nice and early so we can hopefully fix it, in spite of the plane being completely and totally full, and didn’t notice that our driver missed taking the HOV lane north through the tunnel during the afternoon rushhour. Oops. We might not get there early after all… Deep breath, don’t stress, things will work out…

Then no-one would let our car in to the through lane. Seriously. It was amazing. Car after car tightened up the gaps and refused to let our car into the through lane.

[Disclosure here: we joined up with friends who were also taking the trip to Lisbon to share a limo, and the limo that arrived was one of those long, fancy ones. Fun! Never been in one of those before…(and it was actually a lot cheaper than two separate and very ordinary cabs would have been!)]

The attitude of other drivers going into the tunnel and refusing to let our (fancy) car in was unreal. Finally, our intrepid driver hopped out of the car, and walked over to a pretty girl in her car in the through lane and, very sweetly, in his thick accent, begged her to let us in. He won her over, she smiled, and made way.

Unfortunately, the lady in the car behind her became absolutely livid, and leaned on the horn, scowling and grimacing with rage. Then cars all down the line behind her joined the chorus of honks.

Nice.

Karma did her thing a few minutes later, though. When we had another stall in the flow, our driver hopped out of his car and ran back to the pretty girl’s, giving her his card and offering her a discount or a ride or something along those lines.

Nice! (Not sarcastic.)

All four of us finally arrive at the airport, thanks to the pretty girl who let us in to the single open lane northbound, and we still have time to solve our –my– seat problem.

Now, you need to know that Jeff is remarkably skilled at negotiating through issues like this, and I was interested to see how he would work this one out. The prime point was that we booked our flight and picked our seats all the way back in November, and they were together. He’s always really nice, but there’s a definite undercurrent of “You will fix this” when he really gets serious about something like this.

We walk up to the counter, and the issue was suddenly not an issue anymore. My seat had been moved back already!

Nice, again! Weird, but nice.

When we arrive at the gate, we’re talking away as I put down my bags to dash for the ladies’ room, and I suddenly say to Jeff, “They’re calling my name!” He looked at me like I *had* to be mistaken. No, I’m sure of it. Only I have to…um…pee…in the worst way… They will have to wait. I hear them call me again, twice, in quick succession, while I’m in the loo.

Uh oh, again!

I come out and am paged yet again, and yet again as I get to the gate desk. Crickey!

The agent there started talking about seat mix-ups, and I just said that things had been worked out already…but feeling worried that they had been un-worked-out again…

He then said that, apparently, something had gone wrong in the system a few days ago and several of us had been reassigned to different seats all over the plane. Another customer had arrived at the airport ahead of us, absolutely irate, and something about the way he told me about it, the staff there received a total scorcher.

As a result, my seat had been corrected about one minute before we got to the check-in desk, and Jeff didn’t have to work his (nice) magic in his (nice) effective way after all. It was great that we didn’t have to fix it, but I’m really sorry that it wasn’t Jeff who had straightened it out after all, because he wouldn’t have left burn marks on the staff. After all, it wasn’t their fault…

So, the issue that nearly was, wasn’t one after all (for us, that is, not the poor staff), and we got to snuggle up together on our nearly-nine-hour flight to London like we had hoped all along.

See? All’s well that ends well…

🙂

 

 

 

 

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Tolkien quote

“Not all those who wander are lost.”

J.R.R. Tolkien

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Getting excited…and feeling tired!

Status update: Getting excited…and feeling tired! It’s now just past midnight, and we leave in 18 hours… 🙂