On the 27th of December, I got off work in the morning… went home tired and wanting bed… but showered instead and got my bags ready, called the cab, and headed to the airport for home.
Flight to Toronto was fine but Toronto airport was a zoo where you could barely even find a place to sit. And if you decided to actually sit down, you were either near someone who was hacking up a lung or next to a family of six where the kids ran that section of the airport.
My flight to St. John’s got delayed an hour without any given reason. This was a mild irritation the time, but would become bigger as the day went.
The flight to St. John’s was going pretty smoothly. I usually keep the seat screen tuned to the flight map. And noticed we began to slow and descend for St. John’s just before the plane reaches Marystown. But then I notice, the plane on our map is also turning.
First I hope it’s us banking around the Avalon Peninsula in order to land on the right runway… but the turn keeps going until the plane is facing west.
At this moment, the pilot comes on to say the wind and snow in St. John’s is too much for landing, and we’d circle the city a bit in hopes of finding a break but fuel is getting low and we’re going back to Halifax.
I’m figuring fuel was very low, actually, as the flight from Marystown to Halifax is done with no acceleration or climb back to a higher altitude. It feels like a giant, hour and a half long descent.
Anyway, I’ve told the entire story of this day enough. So to wrap it here, I’m at Halifax airport for two or three hours before getting a hotel room for the night. A 10:00 supper alone and off for a night’s sleep after being awake approximately 30 hours. The flight the next day goes well enough but we were lied to by Air Canada. Our attendant tells us other flights tried for St. John’s after ours was cancelled last night… but none made it in. A few days later, I hear from a friend that his brother (who I actually spotted in Halifax airport that night) got in at 1:00 AM.
Still, I was too tired to care anymore and accepted a free night in Halifax as part of my winter travel.
When I hit town, dad was sick. Within a day or two, mom would join him. And one of my friends was also sick… and an uncle was just getting over being sick. Added to the airport coughing and recycled airplane air, and I was waking each morning expecting to feel it.
For a day or two, it felt like I was fighting something. But it may have just been the exhaustion of the travel and lack of sleep. In the end, I never caught anything.
And Christmas came for me with my parents. The late afternoon of December 28th became our Christmas morning. Stockings and gifts are opened and the full turkey dinner is had that night. I can’t say I don’t have good parents, that is to be sure.
We had a snowy day while I was home. With 15 cm falling. The rest of the time, the weather was pretty good. I got some downtown shopping in. Had a late supper at Mallard Cottage. A night at the movies and a nice walk of a nearby trail through the woods. A supper and stroll with a buddy on one of my last days in town and a lunch meeting up at the house of the sick buddy. Help mom and dad take down their Christmas stuff and head on back again.
The flight back to Ottawa was probably worse than the flight to Newfoundland. Yes the Newfoundland trip took two days to accomplish… but I got a couple of free meals and a comfortable bed on that one.
The flight back starts well enough. I have an empty seat between me and the guy on the isle. But it’s all downhill from there. Strong headwinds do two things. First, each leg of our trip (to Halifax and then on to Ottawa) was almost doubled in flying time. What should have taken close to an hour and a half, each flight, took more than two hours.
The other issue was turbulence. I’ve had worse turbulence on flights before, but on both of these flights, it was long bouts of it. To Halifax, the seat belt didn’t turn off until Cape Breton Island. At that point, there was only time for a quick glass of water before landing.
In Halifax, we’re delayed again… with a storm on the way. By the time I’m sitting on the plane, I’m looking out the window to see the snow start to fall. By the time we push back for de-icing, 5 cms has already come down and the wind is gusting it around the runway. I have already heard that the flights for the next day are cancelled because of the forecast storm so I’m thinking if we don’t get out now, I’ll be stuck here again for at least two days.
We finally take off in the snow as if it’s a scene out of a disaster movie where you see planes or space ships shooting out of the fireball of an explosion. Had we taken off only a few seconds later, we’d have been swallowed up by the white disaster.
Climbing out of the blizzard, we’re bouncing pretty good. It’s a smaller plane… so small that my main carry on bag can’t fit in the overhead bin and barely made it under the seat in front of me. Had I stumps for legs, this would have been fine. But needing to find a place for my feet became an exercise in discomfort. Finally I am able to maneuver my feet beneath my bag. Either way it was a day I was glad to not be a six footer.
The constant bump of this flight takes on a casualty in the seats behind me. The girl back there is petrified. Between Halifax and Montreal, we are constantly bumping along. And when the bumps become more dip like, she’s hitting the flight attendant button for guidance. Four times the flight attendants come. Four times assuring her we shall night crash. That this is normal turbulence. And that maybe she could distract herself with a movie or some music.
By the time the attendants would walk away, a fresh round of dips and bumps would occur… and the girl behind me whimpered and sobbed. It’s the most terrified a flyer that I’ve seen. And this girl was in her mid twenties… with a boyfriend sitting right next to her.
My guess is they are no longer a couple today. Perhaps she decided he wasn’t there for her enough in her moment of terror. Maybe he decided she was too much of a baby to be taken seriously. Either way, I’m sure neither viewed the other the same way again… and I sat, foot buried in front of their moment of relationship clarity… bumping along for two hours.
Back in Ottawa, there is another moment of truth to be discovered. From my perch, in Halifax, as the snow blasted the world outside… I had a perfect view of the baggage handlers. And they were pulling bags off the plane rather than loading it up.
I thought back to being at the gate where the attendants there were urging people to check their wheeled carry on at no charge.
When I first tried wedging my feet in under my bag, I thought I had made a mistake. But when I saw several smaller, carry on sized bags among the ones being pulled out of the hold, I figured there’ll be several angry people waiting days for the basics that we think we’re keeping close to us in our travels. Tooth brush… wallet… house keys… ipad… how many people made it home to Ottawa without a way into their own house?
But at the baggage carrousel I’m left wondering if my checked bag has made it with me or if it’s left back in some snowdrift, not to be seen again until Spring.
I see across the way, the hysterical girl and her boyfriend. Occasional hugs… and a whisper or two… but they both seem broken… and uninterested in being there.
Shortly after that… my bag slides down from the belt. Any thoughts I have of the couple drift away from my tired head and waft up to the rafters of the airport like a discarded helium balloon. I slide open handles, put the wheels down… and get myself out of that place.
Cabbing home my brain is fried. The hum of the day (approximately nine hours from the time I entered St. John’s airport to now) drifts around my skull in lava lamp speed. All my memories and thoughts for that day are nothing more than that glowing red goo.
I decide I’m not working the next day. It takes time for red goo to dissipate.
So after a day and two nights working, I’m here again… on my fourth day off. Taking the previous three days to decompress from the rush back to work after such a journey. It’s full on winter and my time away, without a supply of salt for my friend to use when she checked on the house, means my driveway is likely ice covered until Spring. A few days ago I tried to hack into the rink and poured a load of recently bought salt down… but the ice will not give up its asphalt prize. The possibility of future broken bones and lawsuits being another risk of winter travel.
But the sun shines bright… the arctic winds have given way to a boreal calm… and I’ll head out to walk the woods… with memories of sketchy flights… and peaceful TV moments with parents and the subtly salty smell of the sea air of a successful late Christmas time home.
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