Day 1: The cross-country trip
7/25 --
Travel day promised to be long and arduous. I was up late the night before trying to pack and got up early the morning of to get a day's worth of work done before my expected 1:30p house departure, and I also needed to squeeze in a doctor's appointment to get my bite/bruise thing diagnosed before leaving the country. So it was a typical hectic race to get out the door.
Got to the airport plenty early, and check-in was a breeze since Air Canada has about a dozen people fly into Albany in a given day. The plane was a bit late, and it was only once it showed up that I began to understand why -- it was an old Beechcraft, an 18-seater with 9 rows and no amenities. Turned out there was someone on it who'd never flown before and was going to be connecting to a 747 from Toronto to Heathrow -- we told her she couldn't have picked a better study in contrasts for her first flying experience.
We made decent time despite a few bumps and got into YYZ at a reasonable time. Customs turned out to be ridiculously easy -- no one even looked at my bag, and it was just a matter of moving it from the pick-up area onto the connections conveyor belt and moving onto my Vancouver flight.
The Vancouver flight was more fun -- the 767 had a movie, 21, which I hadn't seen before and was pretty entertaining. Unfortunately, it was overcast most of the way -- I'd been hoping for views of the central provinces, where I've never visited, but there was mostly nothing until we got into Alberta. Then the mountains came out, and I got a few decent plane pictures as we chased the sun. 5 hours later, we landed in Vancouver.
I rushed out the door to make sure I got across the airport to my connection, only to find out the Whitehorse flight was delayed an hour. Set out to find some food and tried to figure out how late we'd be. Eventually the plane came and the sun set, in that order, and we took off around 10:30p Pacific time.
The night was beautiful, with a waning half-moon rising in the east. This plane had personalized TVs, so I watched the first half or so of Batman Begins and switched off to look at the GPS tracking map of where the plane was. The plane arrived a bit over an hour late, at around 1:15a.
To my surprise, there was an airport shuttle bus that actually went to the hostel I was staying at, so I got to bed around 2:00a. There weren't any messages for me, but I knew enough to find the open bunk and crawl in, and so I did -- roughly 24 hours after I'd gotten up. Despite the long day, it was good to be back north.
Travel day promised to be long and arduous. I was up late the night before trying to pack and got up early the morning of to get a day's worth of work done before my expected 1:30p house departure, and I also needed to squeeze in a doctor's appointment to get my bite/bruise thing diagnosed before leaving the country. So it was a typical hectic race to get out the door.
Got to the airport plenty early, and check-in was a breeze since Air Canada has about a dozen people fly into Albany in a given day. The plane was a bit late, and it was only once it showed up that I began to understand why -- it was an old Beechcraft, an 18-seater with 9 rows and no amenities. Turned out there was someone on it who'd never flown before and was going to be connecting to a 747 from Toronto to Heathrow -- we told her she couldn't have picked a better study in contrasts for her first flying experience.
We made decent time despite a few bumps and got into YYZ at a reasonable time. Customs turned out to be ridiculously easy -- no one even looked at my bag, and it was just a matter of moving it from the pick-up area onto the connections conveyor belt and moving onto my Vancouver flight.
The Vancouver flight was more fun -- the 767 had a movie, 21, which I hadn't seen before and was pretty entertaining. Unfortunately, it was overcast most of the way -- I'd been hoping for views of the central provinces, where I've never visited, but there was mostly nothing until we got into Alberta. Then the mountains came out, and I got a few decent plane pictures as we chased the sun. 5 hours later, we landed in Vancouver.
I rushed out the door to make sure I got across the airport to my connection, only to find out the Whitehorse flight was delayed an hour. Set out to find some food and tried to figure out how late we'd be. Eventually the plane came and the sun set, in that order, and we took off around 10:30p Pacific time.
The night was beautiful, with a waning half-moon rising in the east. This plane had personalized TVs, so I watched the first half or so of Batman Begins and switched off to look at the GPS tracking map of where the plane was. The plane arrived a bit over an hour late, at around 1:15a.
To my surprise, there was an airport shuttle bus that actually went to the hostel I was staying at, so I got to bed around 2:00a. There weren't any messages for me, but I knew enough to find the open bunk and crawl in, and so I did -- roughly 24 hours after I'd gotten up. Despite the long day, it was good to be back north.