Returning home, the hard way
I knew it was too good to be true. I had never missed a flight in my life…until this year. It hasn’t been a particularly good one for flying. It started in NYC in February. It wasn’t really anybody’s fault except the weather. It was just my bad luck that I was scheduled to fly out the day after a record breaking snow storm hit, cancelling all flights that day. I didn’t really even miss the flight, just a change in the original plan.
Then there was coming back from Perú in April. Somebody should be to blame there, but it’s hard to pinpoint who. Bottom line was we didn’t get through customs fast enough to catch the connection.
Then there was this time. My day started by waking up early in the morning to hobble (yes, my foot still really fucking hurts) to the tram stop to take that to the train station to get to Schiphol airport. I had a flight to Dublin, where my flight home left from. No problems here, even though I was worried an hour and a half between wouldn’t be enough. Not only was it enough, but I had time to grab a pint on the way. I figured, what the hell, I’m in Dublin again… of course I need to drink a Guinness! It being 10am sure wasn’t a hinderance to me. Nor, apparently, to the others in the pub drinking beer that early. I mean come on… it’s Ireland!
What I didn’t know beforehand, though, was that the flight leaving Dublin, heading for Toronto, also made a stop in Shannon. There we had to deplane so they could clean and restock. In the process, they realized that a few of the toilets weren’t working. They got a maintenance crew working on it, but it delayed the flight by 2 hours. They never did get them working. They said the options were to either ground the flight completely, or continue with a lower passenger capacity, as they need a certain number of restrooms per passenger. They chose the latter, and let the passengers that had come from Dublin back on, but those to get on in Shannon were screwed. Luckily for me, I got to get back on.
I had three hours in Toronto between flights, but the airport is in a mess as they’re building new terminals, so you have to rely on shuttles to get you everywhere. With being two hours late getting in, having to deal with shuttles, customs, and security, I didn’t make the flight. So rather than getting to Detroit around 19.00 on the 4th of July, where I would still have enough time to go to a friend’s house to BBQ and drink some beer, I would get home on the 5th at 9.30am, and still have to work by 14.00. On the plus side, AirCanada put me up in a fancy hotel for free, and gave me two meal vouchers for dinner and breakfast the next morning. The hotel was way nicer than anything I’d actually pay for. It would have been cheaper for them to pay to rent me a car to drive home as I suggested… but oh well. The restaurant in the hotel was also very nice (read: expensive). Good food washed down with some wine… however nothing on the menu was cheap enough to be covered by the meal voucher. It was a great discounted meal, but I was still out some more cash for it. And same for breakfast the next morning. Even though we landed around 17.00, but the time I got through all the hassles of everything, and waited another hour for the hotel shuttle, it was about 20.30 by the time I got to the hotel. And by the time I had finished eating dinner, it was too late to be able to actually do anything in Toronto. I didn’t have a car, but, thanks to good ole BnA, had some peeps that could pick me up and save me. But I had to get up early, the jetlag was catching up with me, and the wine was kicking in, so I chilled in the hotel for the night.
Everything was much better in the morning, arriving back in the D on time… and still having to go back to work in a few hours… Luckily, that’s not going to have to happen for much longer!
Tags: Amsterdam, Canada, Detroit, Europe, Netherlands, North America, Travel, United States
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