Lorem Ipsum

First, the night before I was going to leave, my wireless connection stopped working. The BTOpenZone site gave me some kind of Java error. When I tried to restart and log in again, it gave me an authentication error. When I called their support line, the phone rang three times and then I got the loud annoying series of beeps that in the US indicates that the number you're calling is no longer in service; in Glasgow, though, it preceded a recorded message saying "The other party has hung up." I tried again; same result. It's a mighty efficient way of avoiding having to keep support people on staff—though it doesn't really manage to maximize customer frustration; if that was their goal, they should've had a long complicated phone tree and then hung up. I'm glad to see that the US retains the lead in customer-frustration technology.

Anyway. I mention that mainly because at the airport next morning, I had some extra time so I decided to try to use the T-Mobile hotspot in the airport to check mail. It told me I could use my BTOpenZone account, so I tried that—and was told that I was already logged in, so I couldn't log in again. Sigh.

Oh, one more item: the Air Canada baggage-check person told me I would have to pick up my checked bag at Toronto baggage claim and carry it over to the connecting flight. I said, "So it won't be checked through?" She said, "Oh, it's checked through, you just have to pick it up in Toronto." I decided this must be some airline-jargon specialized meaning of the phrase "checked through" and gave up.

So anyway, I got on the plane. The flight went well. The food was quite good, especially considering that United had insisted to me that there would be no food at all on any of the flights. (I booked the tickets via United, but most of the legs of the trip were on Air Canada, which hadn't bothered to tell United that there were meals, generally several meals per leg.) I was amused at the meal distribution: in the front half of the plane, the flight attendant asked "Chicken or pasta?", and then when she ran out of pasta (or whatever the other choice was, I forget) she asked "Chicken?" at every seat, and then she ran out of meals entirely a few rows ahead of me, so another flight attendant showed up and simply started shoving meals into passengers' hands, without asking if they wanted them. He pushed one at me, ignored my "What is it?" query, and disappeared. Eventually I saw him again and called out to ask what the food was and he told me it was chicken. Anyway, it was much tastier than most airline food.

We approached Toronto only half an hour or so later than scheduled, and then we were informed that the weather at Toronto was too bad to land, and that we were out of fuel, so we were being diverted to another airport. We landed at the other airport (North Bay?) and refueled, and waited for Toronto's weather to clear up. Made it back to Toronto only three hours later than scheduled.

I'd had only two and a half hours scheduled between arrival and departure, so I figured I had missed my connecting flight. But no—after I went through Canadian customs, picked up my checked baggage, carried it to the departure terminal, went through American customs, and went to check my bag for the flight, I learned that my connection had been delayed by three hours due to bad weather, so the 4:30 pm flight was now a 7:30 pm flight. Cool! I called Lola (my phone had Roaming access, probably expensive but better than nothing) and let her know when the flight would be arriving.

And I thought to myself, y'know, much as I often malign airlines and airline workers, it's pretty miraculous that these people carried me safely in an unlikely metal contraption several thousand miles in just a few hours. Sure, a three-hour delay at the end of a six-hour flight is annoying, but in the old days it would've taken weeks or months to travel that far. And we didn't crash; the pilots did their job and brought us safely to port. That's worth a little delay.

I got to the gate and decided it would be a good idea to talk to an agent there and make sure I had the right boarding document and so on. (On the flight out, United had given me seat assignments on all three flights, but apparently failed to let Air Canada know they'd done so.) So I stood in front of the desk for ten or fifteen minutes as three gate agents worked to find flights for two different groups of people trying to get to Australia. If I understood right, the earliest they were going to make it to Australia was Saturday; I think there was a lost day due to the Date Line somewhere in there, but even so, it was going to be at least 48 hours' more travel for those folks. And Air Canada, of course, said that since the delays were due to weather, they wouldn't pay for hotel rooms for the stranded travelers.

Finally they looked over my boarding pass and said it was fine. And I sat and waited for a while. And then they announced a delay. And another delay. And finally, a little after 8, they told us that the plane had been damaged by the bad weather, and that we would have to wait for another plane to arrive, and that instead of 7:30 pm, the flight would now be leaving at 9:30 pm. To make up for it, they gave us each Cn$10 worth of credit at one of the food places down the hall. And offered free ice cream.

It might have been possible at that point to run off to another gate and fly standby on the 8:30 pm flight to San Francisco, but there wasn't much time and I didn't know what would happen with the bags and I needed food. So I stuck around for the 9:30 flight.

They got us unboard by a little after 9:30. And then they told us that the catering truck hadn't arrived yet, and that of course we wouldn't want to fly without that.

By this time, I had forgotten all about being thankful to the airline for having carried me safely so far and so fast. I hadn't had much sleep the night before, I'd been traveling for about 17 hours, and all I wanted was to be home. I was thinking, Who needs a catering truck? It's the middle of the night, and they just fed us. Leave it behind! Let's go!

A few minutes later, they told us that four passengers from the flight had decided not to go on the flight after all, but hadn't told the airline that, so their luggage had gotten loaded onto the plane. So now all the luggage needed to be taken out so that the airline could find and remove the bags that belonged to the ex-passengers.

A few minutes later, they mentioned that the catering truck still hadn't left the catering place yet, and that it would probably be another twenty minutes before we could go.

Finally they got all the food loaded and all the appropriate bags unloaded. It was 10:30 pm Toronto time, three hours after the original delayed departure time; a total of six hours after the original scheduled departure time.

They announced that we should put our seat backs and tray tables into their locked, upright positions, etc. We were all set to leave.

And then a flight attendant came down the aisle insisting that everyone must open their windows before we could take off.

The first time she came by, I feigned sleep so as not to have to deal with her. But after she went past, I sat up and opened my eyes, and then she came back and told me to open my window. By which she meant, it turned out, that my windowshade had to be all the way up/open before we could take off.

I was baffled and furious and just about at the end of my rope. Such a tiny thing; it wasn't like I actually cared about whether my windowshade was open or closed. But I've been flying regularly for nearly 20 years now, usually in window seats, and no crew member has ever told me to raise my windowshade. The official announcement over the PA system didn't mention windowshades. I can't think of a single safety-related reason that all windowshades would need to be up for takeoff. It really felt like she was just messing with us because she could.

I'm sure there was some reason for it. Maybe it's a new safety regulation. Maybe someone in the ground crew has to count lighted windows to make sure nobody's stolen any. Maybe they wanted to be sure I hadn't hidden a knife between the shade and the window. I don't know.

Anyway. I restrained myself from yelling at the flight attendant, and we got the windowshades up, and the plane took off, and I alternately read and edited and napped and ate more of their food for the duration of the flight home.

And even though it was 1 am by the time we arrived, Lola had come to pick me up, which was a huge relief. I had been figuring it was too late for her to be up, so I'd been trying to decide which was the least-bad option: taking a $70 taxi home, taking a less-expensive airport shuttle that would probably take two hours to get me home, renting a car (though I was definitely in no shape to drive), or just getting a hotel room and dealing with it in the morning.