What a trip home!
Trip Start
Nov 09, 2006
1
9
Trip End
Nov 29, 2006
Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Now a little side note, Dave and I had already blown a fortune in this town over the last two days, thats just the way it is for tourists to get around and to survive. Well ok we did hit the town both nights but whatever its still bloody expensive. To give you an idea i spent about $350.00 Canadian in one night out, where back home it would have costed about $100.00. Another silly thing was i made two local phone calls to some friends in London and the phone bill was about $40.00...yeah nice.
Anyway Dave and I had a running joke about how expensive it was, we'd say "hey whats another fifty, hundred, two hundred" and so on every time some new cost came up out of no where. So the last day we said maybe we'd try to cut the cost down if we could. So now were taking a hundred dollar cab ride to the airport. Actually not a big deal whats fifty bucks each. Well not much considering.
We get to the airport with time to spare everything went without a hitch until we arrived ten hours later in Vancouver. We arrive in the winter wonderland of YVR. Snow everywhere...what the hell!! I have never seen Vancouver with that much snow that i can remember not to mention pretty cold. So the first little problem was that there was no place for the plane to park, we sit out on the tarmac for about 45 minutes after landing. Hey whatever, were just happy to be almost home. The next plan was to jump off the plane, go through customs, get my bag and cruise to the next flight to Kamloops in about 1 hour and a half. The only little problem was because we booked the trip from London to Vancouver separately from the Van to Kam we had to re-check in.
We get through customs relatively fast and head to the baggage pick up carousel. no bags. Ok, fine, we waited for at least 30 minutes, Apparently there was trouble getting the frozen doors open on the plane and then some guy got hurt working around the plane. Dave decided to head to the check in and hold the plane for me. He had no extra luggage to pick up and he could do it quickly. He headed out. I sat and waited until he called my cell. I got a call from him shortly after saying I better forget the bag and get it sent to Kamloops separately because i was going to miss the plane. I got it organized to be sent to Kamloops and i left the arrivals enroute to domestic departures.
I get to Domestic and find out they just cut off check in, i missed the plane. I did the smoozing i could to no avail, they told me the flight was completely full and that i got the proverbial screwgee up you know where. So they ended up having to reschedule my flight from the 18:00 to the 21:30. Fine i could wait, i assumed Dave figured out i was not making it. So anyway i headed through security and met up with a friend from high school Kevin Cooper who was on the same flight as me. We decided to get a bite to eat and then head over to the boarding gate around 19:00hrs or so.
I apologize for the length of this entry, i understand if no one is reading this anymore, its also for me to reflect back on one day. Anyway if your still reading, keep on keepin on, the story gets better.
So Kev and I make it to the gate and find out the 18:00hr flight just boarded and are sitting out on the tarmac waiting to get de-iced, its like 7:30pm or so, nice. Little did I know that the flight i missed was not full at all and sat on the tarmac for two hours before they took off. Dave called me at about 23:00hrs when he finally made it home. He was supposed to get home at about 20:00hrs. Yeah insult to injury. Anyway Kevin and i sat in the gate hopelessly watching at least four to five flights get cancelled in front of us on the display board. The weather was bad enough that planes were freezing up faster than they could de-ice them. We were noticing our flight was getting delayed every half hour in twenty minute increments, thats fine we just didn't want to see cancelled...delayed was alright.
At about 11:00(23:00hrs) I was getting kind of worried that we werent getting out so I went to talk to the frustrated Air Canada fella and he basically didn't install any confidence in me either, he straight out told me it didn't look good, the flight from Victoria hadn't even left to get here(thats our plane). He said just hang tough and hopefully they would find out sooner than later, maybe get a hotel in mind that has rooms available in case the flight gets cancelled. The next flight out of Vancouver was 7:25am the next morning.
I kept positive and optimistic. It didn't really matter anyway, i overheard some people talking who's flight got cancelled, they said there was no hotel room available in all of Richmond. To get a hotel you had to head farther out of town. Whatever i said, i'll sleep in the airport IF i had too. (haha)
Poor Kevin, he had contact lenses in and no where to take them out and his eyes were getting red and irritated. He couldn't see much of anything anymore. I had to read the board for him like someone would for their blind friend. It was actually pretty funny.
So Finally at about 12:00 they broke it to us, the flight was cancelled and maybe some of us could catch the 7:25 flight others would get the 11:30 departure or worst case scenario the 2pm flight the next day. No one wanted that one. So the poor guy had to assign us flights based on some unknown computer criteria like a flight lottery, I got the 11:30 flight with 7:30 standby possibility. Kevin got the dreaded 2pm flight but had a standby possibility on the 7:25. We asked the guy what the chances of having room on the 7:25 plane, he told us pretty good, based on the last few days twenty five percent never showed up for any of the flights due to weather.
So now that we had a flight we had to find a place to sleep for the night. After helping Kevin find some place and stuff for his contacts to store for the night i led him like a seeing eye dog to a seemingly quiet place in the arrivals area next to a baggage carousel. We set up our carry on bags for pillows, put in ear plugs and went to sleep. We woke up about twenty minutes later to about 50 people pretending not to see us as they stood by waiting for their bags to arrive on the carousel. We must have looked like bums sleeping on the street or something, i guess i know how they feel now.
We quickly left the area in search of somewhere better and quieter. We found a spot in the departures area where two others had found, and were already sleeping in. We set up our individual spots and went to sleep. I woke up severaly times throughout the night shivering because the idiots at the airport have air conditioning blasting all night. We were also sleeping on cold tile that wasn't helping either. It took us two hours to warm up in the mornign, we ordered hot chocolate at about 5:00am when we could. This was starting to make me unhappy. Until then i was optimistic and happy enough. I was overtired, cold and just not wanting to spend any more time in an airport anymore.
We made it to the gate about an hour before the 7:30 flight to wait and see. Well the place filled up rather quickly and i now had about zero confidence that i was getting on the flight. The plane holds fifty people and there was seemingly that many and more. Everyone from our flight the night before was there to play the 7:25 flight to Kamloops lottery. Some looked the same or worse than us, others you could tell spent the night at home or in a hotel and looked fresh and happy to be there.
7:00 rolled around and the first two names were called...not us. Shit!! wait longer, the next name called...not mine...next name Corey Butler and Kevin Cooper. WOOHOO!! It was like winning the lottery we practically ran up there like we were called up on the Price is Right. Got our boarding cards and chilled out. We were the only five people that made it on the first flight, i don't know how they picked us, and quite frankly i don't care. We made it on and made it home safely.
So thats the trip in a nutshell, it was unbelievable and truly memorable. The last part of the trip was a series of unfortunate events but in the end it was one hell of a story. At least i think so, anyway to those who read the whole thing good on ya, thank. Cheers to everyone and see you around.
i will put more pictures on as the days go on and i get time.
C
