Trip’s over.
Alarm at 5:30, snoozed until 5:48. No real snoozing involved, just lying lazily in bed not wanting to get up.
Tightly rolled up my clothes into the duffel last night which gave me a false sense of having made plenty of room in the bag until, this morning, I had to add my toiletries bag, a sweater and a sweatshirt, making it a cramming exercise again. Nothing in the bag that wasn’t there when I came, yet it seemed heavier.
Decided to Uber instead of walking to Union Station because of the aforementioned laziness. Uber ride was nice enough except for the smell of the air ‘freshener’.
Tried purchasing the train ticket to the airport with the company card again, again it was rejected. Bozos!
Turns out almost everyone else had this problem with the train ticket. Get a bunch of developers in the same room discussing something like this and it becomes a conversation bordering on theology as to the hows, whys, and wherefores of credit card processing and company policies. A couple of us spent some time in this before ending with the equivalent of god moving in mysterious ways.
Train to Pearson has plastic partitions between seats. They’re kept pretty clean. Thinking that in New York there would hair grease, skin oil, and clever epithets scratches into them from day one and they wouldn’t have been cleaned since day two.
With the knowledge gained during my arrival, it was quicker to find my way to terminal 3. Security was easy enough, people here are sure damn friendly. Almost as if they like their jobs or something ridiculous like that.
Border control was a mess. Two lines: one for MCP app holders with nobody in it; the other for those without with the entire population of Toronto in it. I’m pretty sure that the reason is that people don’t know that leaving Toronto, Pearson (YYZ) is the ‘port of entry’ and many airports (like LaGuardia) aren’t listed. It confused me at first and there was none one to ask, but i reasoned it out: if there’s a border control here, then this must be the POE. Sailed right through.
Terrible breakfast at the airport at somethings called ‘Urban Market’ consisting of a container of chocolate milk, a lemon loaf (what nobody seems to call a lemon pound cache anymore), and a bottle of Perrier. Could have gone to the Starbucks all the way in the other side of the A Gates, actually did go, but the line there was almost as bad as the non-MPC line at border control
Illustrating the value of knowing your customer: shoeshine guy offers me a shine. I look down at my canvas shoes and say ‘no.’
Paid an extra 47 bucks for upgrade to business. Wonder how they came up with that amount. Why not 45 or 50? It’s like they prorated some intangible thing
((comfort * distance/ticket cost) * remaining seats). Anyway, worth the money to get in first and the comfy chair (crowd mumbles ‘the comfy chair?’, ‘the comfy chair!’)
Especially with a full flight, it’s nice to have the extra room for legs and elbows between the seats. (Bonus: fig bars and a seltzer served in an actual glass. Coming up in coach we were offered nothing and told we couldn’t bring beverages on board)
Am in the aisle, so no inflight pictures except for this one
The woman in 4A was leaning across the aisle and saying something to me. I couldn’t understand her, her voice was muffled. I leaned closer to hear her and the sound of my book falling woke me up. When I looked across the aisle the woman, a very different woman than the one in my dream, was sitting back in her seat reading. The muffled in my dream was that of the pilot, who was still talking, announcing our descent into turbulent skies above New York. I picked up my book and, packing it into my backpack, started to feel the initial jolts which lasted about fifteen minutes until we reached the ground. The woman in 4A took pictures documenting our approach.
Joearf’s Thoughts 