Another Trip... Another Story

This trip I went with a different strategy. Normally, I fly Thursday night on the red-eye, arriving mid-Friday and exhausted. Then I fly out on the 6am flight and get back to Irvine around noon to two in the afternoon. This time I flew all day on Friday, taking an early morning flight from LAX and then I chose a 4 pm flight for my trip back.

I already posted the brief story of the delay I encountered on the trip up to Canada.

After our usual tearful goodbyes, I boarded the plane from SJ and was seated next to a young boy, Travis, who was taking his first ever flight. He had the plastic necklace with the paperwork and information he needed to get where he was going (he is 12 and going to Toronto to catch a bus to St. George for a camp. Apparently did it through Tim Horton's, Canada's equivalent of Starbuck's Coffee). It was odd answering all of his question, watching his delight at takeoff and landing, and his amazement of flying over the Great Lakes and other parts of the trip as seen from 35,000 feet up.

This flight was smooth and easy, with a great pilot who took off smoothly and landed gently.

My flight from Toronto to LAX was not quite as smooth. First, those of us who waited the longest for the flight to arrive at our gate had to suffer through 20 minutes of the most piercing beeping noise because some idiot had opened a door without having properly turned off the alarm. Next, our own Air Canada employees set off the alarm on our gate door for quite a few minutes repeatedly while they figured out how to turn it off.

The plane was packed, with no extra seats available. We had to wait for over 30 minutes while Air Canada tried to allow some people from a Tel Aviv flight to make the connection. I think it is admirable that Air Canada does such a good job of tracking its passengers and doing their best to get them on their flights and on their way-- but they forgot that the other 160 of us were starting this leg of our journey 30 minutes behind... I have a "needs of the many" argument brewing.

Once up in the air, things went smoothly at first. I was on an Airbus 319 again, which has a power plug, USB ports, and a screen in the back of every seat that allows you to watch upwards of 10 different movies, a number of TV shows, and listen to music. It is a great invention and I don't know why they don't put this in every plane.

A few hours into the flight, we suddenly had an announcement asking for anyone with medical experience to please identify themselves. The last time I heard that, on the same flight as a matter of fact, a man had a heart attack. This time, it was a woman who was only 20 weeks pregnant whose water broke and she appeared to be going into labor. The emergency was dire enough that we made an emergency landing in Denver. Then, of course, they had to refuel, there were Customs issues that Air Canada had to resolve, timing issues (flight crews have a limit on how long they are allowed to be on a plane/in the air and we were reaching this crew's limits), and we needed a new flight plan. These all got resolved and our flight was out for taxi within about an hour of landing. And, yes, in case you are wondering, they did not offer us any food or water during this time and we were not allowed to get up or stretch our legs.

We then started our taxi out to the runaway when we came to a halt. The announcement this time was that we were waiting on weight to thrust data to be received before we could take off. We sat for another 30 minutes about halfway to the runway-- again with no water or food offered. We finally got the data needed and flew the rest of the way to LAX.

Now, my trip which was scheduled to go from 4:10 pm (AST) until 10:30 pm (PST) went from 4:10 AST until about 1:30 am PST. Next, I walked out of terminal two, turned left, and walked down to the close-by Super Shuttle stop. However, there was no one there and no Super Shuttle employee to check in with and have call the vans to come get me. I hung out a few minutes, then walked down to the stop in front of terminal 3. Here, about 15 people had collected and, since there also wasn't a Super Shuttle employee working the stop, we just started waving down vans as we saw them coming and asked the driver if he/she would take us.

Four vans and about 20-30 minutes later, I convinced the Disneyland shuttle to take me and he quickly became the "Orange County" shuttle as we picked up others for the trip. I was the first one on and the last one off, getting home after 3 am PST instead of the 11:30ish I was expecting. I called Melissa before being dropped off, as she wakes up for work around 7 am and she was expecting an email from me that I had arrived safely. Wanted to let her know that not only hadn't I arrived yet, I was still on the journey.

Getting home, I had to spend some time cleaning up after the cat. Caly came out immediately, meowing significantly and without surcease until I went to bed and spent a long time scratching her. My current person who watches her only feeds and waters her, so her litter box was a mess and there were wet towels in her usual "bad spot" in the front room that needed serious cleaning. The floor in the bathroom needed sweeping to clean up all the litter and waste she had scratched out of it when she was done doing her business.

I then had to reset the AC to a lower temperature, as I move it up to 80 degrees when I leave to somewhat limit how long it is on (plus, Edison tells us, that setting it to 78 or higher can save us money yearly on our electricity bill).

Lastly, I called into work and told Renee that I was just getting home, how late/early it was, and that I would likely only work a half day or may take the full day off depending on how long I slept in that morning. Only then, nearing 4 am, was I able to finally crawl into bed, spend time with Caly, and drift off to sleep.

Not a very good sample of this new flight pattern, so I don't really know if it is good or bad. I am already scheduled for my next trip to SJ, which involves our Church Wedding, It uses the same flight scheme as this time, so maybe I'll get a better opinion then.

Anyway, I'm home, finally, safe and sound. Going to eat something, see how I'm doing after, and then possibly log on to work for a couple of hours.