Making It Up As I Go Along #350

THURSDAY...
— Feeling off today. Wake at 2:30 and don’t sleep anymore until 10:30. Stomach isn’t great either.
— Stay home from work, sleep much between 10:30 and 1:00. Feeling better soon after that.

FRIDAY...
— Sleep alright tonight. In to work in the morning and I’m on my own today... partnerless. Of course, having Debbie there supervising is good, she helps out when things get busy in the late morning and early afternoon.
— Nap for close to an hour at 9:00 tonight. But that’s fine as I need to stay up late to change over to night shift tomorrow.

SATURDAY...
— Lazy day around the house with a movie on DVD and some relaxing.
— Work in the evening. Get there before 5:30 today and am on my own until 10:30. Pretty quiet night. I do the gym around 1:00 and Phil and I hold down the fort for the rest of the night, with little incident.

SUNDAY...
— Sleep until 12:45. Not used to waking up in the afternoon... even if I don’t go to bed before 6:00 AM.
— Softball... we win??? We do, it’s weird. A bad team we play against though. Still, a nice way to end it for me as I miss the last game due to Christmas.
— Work alone. My first full shift by myself. Pretty slow night with one weird thing that I mostly take care of but leave some to go over with Keith at shift change.
— A 10 km line of traffic heading into the city when I’m heading out to Orleans at 6:00 AM. Bus strike is playing havoc with those on regular work schedules. It would be hell to be in that line of traffic.

MONDAY...
— Around the house day. I’m up around 11:00 and do some laundry, watch some TV, put on a movie, and get a pizza come in. Packing for the trip in the evening.
— Lowest spam day in years on the e-mail. 10! It must be the coming of the end!

TUESDAY...
— Travel day... leave Ottawa 4:30 PM Tuesday... arrive in St. John’s 2:15 AM Wednesday. You can get in to outer space quicker than that. Air Canada... oh my... oh dear... in Montreal, flight’s delayed due to mechanical problems and the fact that the pilots are stuck in Ottawa an extra hour... we board the plane an hour and a half late... annoyed. Then we find out that Air Canada didn’t realize that the trolley full of luggage was also meant to go aboard our flight. So after we get on board, the grounds crew slowly and deliberately put the bags on. One at a time on the conveyor belt... watching the bag go up and into the plane... and then on to the next one. We are sitting on the plane for another full hour while the sloth crew keep this up.
— Lots of turbulence out of Montreal and some more in Newfoundland.
— Dickheads (pardon the language... but sometimes it’s just right) sitting behind me. Two... yes, it’s right again... dickheads who have been working in Alberta (one on the oil rigs and the other in construction). They are yelling and laughing and swearing to each other all flight long. So much swearing that it doesn’t even make sense. “I f’n told her to f’n go the f home and then what f’n sh*t she said back made me f’n sh*t my f’n pants.” I’m not kidding... this is how they talked... and loud. It wasn’t even in angry tones though. Just all matter of fact like. And they’d laugh loudly when they’d finish each story. I hated them by... about... New Brunswick. Lots of flying left between New Brunswick and Newfoundland.
— See mom at the baggage carousel at 2:30 or so. We even got delayed getting off the bloody plane... the ramp didn’t work right away. So the dickheads behind me were then getting on their cell phones (lovely invention that cell phone... allows you to share every conversation you ever have... no matter how minuscule and insignificant, with a plane full of strangers. “WALLY”, yelled one dickhead, “WHERE the F are YA?” “I’M STUCK on the F’n PLANE!”
— Thanks to Air Canada, I now know what my own personal hell is.
— Bowl of cereal with a little chat to ma and pa after that. Odd to be up chatting with the parents at 3:00 AM... but there you go, another Air Canada Miracle.

WEDNESDAY...
— Up at 11:15 today. Woke up not knowing where I was. Go with dad to visit uncle Wince and Brenda... go for some groceries too... then hang around home where Wayne and Sylvia come for a visit. I’m tired today though... perk up as the night goes but hoping I have real energy tomorrow.

THURSDAY...
— Fairly lazy day. I sleep until 9:30 but snooze on the sofa until close to 1:30. Dad and I head downtown for lunch and take a look at the city from Signal Hill.
— Supper and the Christmas tree to put up... then mom, dad and I watch A Christmas Carol... or Scrooge... or whatever they call the 1951 movie.


Dorval
Montreal’s airport has a weird way with me. I’ve had some of my most frustrating times there. I’ve sat waiting for a plane staying outside of security for a good eight hours, tucked in a corner reading until being overrun by a great swath of middle easterners who seemed unimpressed with the idea of buffer space... they literally came on top of me.

Dorval Airport has also been the scene where I’ve been stranded by Air Canada... I was sent out from there to a hotel for two days before I could leave.

I’ve also had interesting, almost mystical times in Dorval. A delay one summer night, due to a great lightning storm outside. The terminal I was in at the time was mostly empty and I sat alone at a bank of seats, looking out at the night sky, watching the world light up and rumble for hours.

And I’ve had a lunch, alone on a soft winter’s night. Looking out the great windows as I ate, seeing the sky go from the light blue of day to the fuzzy purple of evening. Distant city lights flickered and the lights of incoming planes, brightening from star like specks to great headlights of incoming air ships, brought a peace with them. People were making their way to loved ones at a festive time of year.

This year, Dorval gave a bit of the good with a bit of the bad. There were the fools of the grounds crew. People acting as sloths as they deliberately loaded luggage on the plane, piece by piece... one at a time... not adding one til the other was gone. All this after they thought the plane was already loaded. Someone looked over and saw an airport train of baggage sitting there on the tarmac and they said “hey, what about that stuff?” So there we sat aboard our flight home, for an extra hour, as they wheeled up the bags and began the slow motion dance.

But there were also moments of insight and meditation that night as I waited for my plane home.

How often do we see people? The same people that is. Today my mind got going on this due to activities in Ottawa that took Montreal to percolate them.

When I check my bags at Ottawa, a woman checks my info, makes sure of the bags I’m checking, asks if I packed them myself... the basic run through.

Forty minutes later, passing from security to the gate for my flight, the same woman checks my boarding pass. She smiles and tells me “Don’t worry, I won’t be in Montreal.”

I chuckle at the comment yet find it odd. That’s because it takes me another twenty minutes to realize it was the same woman I had dealt with upon my arrival at the airport. Had she said nothing when checking my boarding pass, I’d have never placed her and would have sworn I dealt with two different people at Ottawa airport.

In Montreal, I sit and wait for my flight home. I get to thinking of all the people around me. Without the mind jogs like the one by the woman in Ottawa, how many strangers have I come across again and again?... each time thinking it was the first.

I’m sitting and waiting, looking out the large windows where I had previously been alone, watching lightling storms in the summer. Now the place is teaming with people. As I look out at the night’s activities on the runways, I’m getting the ghostly images of passers by behind me. I see all shapes and sizes reflected against the night... walking slightly blurred and translucent. Have I ever seen any of them before? I find myself occasionally turning and looking over my shoulder, making sure that the ghosts in the glass are actual people passing only a few feet behind me.

Three years ago, I sat in that café looking out at the purpling sky as planes drifted in for a landing. Today I sat there again. At the same window, in the same spot. Were some of the people who passed by me today passing by me then? I recognize noone, but I was also completely clueless of a woman I saw twice within forty minutes... twice in three years would be too much for me to comprehend.

Rarely I’ve seen individuality that stood out to me among the crowds. I remember a few weeks of driving to work along the busy highway from Orleans to Ottawa. And in those few weeks, there was a unique pick up truck. The pan was covered with a home made wooden molding. And in those few weeks, I drove past that truck four or five times. Meeting up with the same vehicle in a sea of cars. How many other cars do I pass by each day without knowing it... due to their lack of originality?

So I’m there in Dorval Airport, contemplating how alone we are. I’ve passed hundreds of individuals on this day, how many of them have I truly seen for the very first time? And how many have I passed, either here or in some other place before? A person I pass in Montreal’s airport, I may have stood behind in a line at Tim Horton’s in Ottawa.

In the grand scheme of things, we’re probably not surrounded by perfect strangers half as often as we believe. Sometimes, like with my oblivion regarding that Ottawa airport employee, our aloneness is just our own doing.