Hell Trip

Well, I took on Toronto Airport and almost won.

The trip started early afternoon in Winnipeg. Earl drove me in and stuck around to ensure that there were not any problems with my luggage.

The luggage weight was not a problem and I setlled down to wait for the flight to Toronto. The timing was slightly tight, and I had about an hour and twenty five minutes to get myself between terminals and checked into Zoom.

The flight was delayed out of Winnipeg and a failed approach at Toronto added to the time. I was standing in the baggage claim at Terminal 1 and looked at my watch and thought, "wow, I still have plenty of time", until I reralised that I had lost an hour and I had less than 20 minutes to get to the Zoom Check-in desk. Halfway there the left wheel fell off my suitcase but I made it with 5 minutes to spare, they took my luggage off me and gave me my boarding pass and stuck my baggage claim ticket to it.

Then they sent me to a set of closed security gates - in fact at this time, the whole airport had closed down. I had to walk back past the gibbering idiots at the Zoom Desk and find an open set of gates to get through security. I breezed through that (after taking my belt off) and got myself to the departure gate. The plane had almost fully boarded and I got myself on and was feeling good until a large couple came along and sat in the neighbouring seats. The wife sat next to me and spilled into my seat for the entire journey, pretty well elimiating any chance of sleep. About an hour outside of Glasgow I started to talk to the husband and after finding out he was from Manitoba as well, we traded Prairie Stories.

I thought I had got through this trip relatively unscathed, until I tried to claim my baggage. Half an hour later as I (and about forty others) watched a single unclaimed suitcase wind its way around the baggage claim area, I knew that this story was not over yet. When I filled in the lost luggage form, I doscovered that the idiots at the check-in desk at Zoom had attached my baggage claim ticket to the portion of the ticket that the airport staff had retained in Toronto. Fortunately the lost wheel should be a pretty good identifier.

Liz met me at the airport and after kisses and cuddles, I got myself home to a warm bed and nice snooze, after roughly 24 hours of travelling.

Good to be home