Day 1, Part I: Canada

After watching American Beauty to stay awake all night and mess
with my internal clock, I stole out of Michal's place in Vancouver at
5:45am. The previous night had involved some, but not too much, booze
(Ritchie and Chris' school-girl/greaser/biker party - I got a drawn-on
tattoo of a heart with a knife through it that said "MOM"), so I was in
decent shape to begin this journey (it's not like I was hitching up the
chuckwagon to ride out to the East coast or something).

I had a separate flight from Vancouver to Toronto on Air Canada's Tango.
Not the best flight experience . . . it's not appreciably cheaper, but is
really, completely without frills. Fortunately, I had brought an
expensive airport sandwich with me to tide me over. No wonder people are
always so excited to be on Westjet flights when I talk to them. I am a
long-time supporter of Westjet, but it just didn't work into my schedule
this time.

I made it to the Toronto airport with baggage and self intact. I met Joe
from Winnipeg on the shuttle from Terminal 2 (where, incidentally, I have
spent almost all of my time in Toronto over the years) to Terminal 1. I
would have grabbed food and a beer with him, but instead ended up waiting
over an hour in line due to late-arriving Italians (the line for the Paris
flight was the same as an earlier flight for Milan).

Security notes: Apparently I no longer set off metal detectors now that I
am without magnetic insoles (never added any to my new boots), and my belt
is somehow less metallic than before. Plastic knives, which I couldn't
bring through security in Saskatoon for Thanksgiving, 2001 are available
in the boarding area with my meal, as well as on my international flight.

I bought an expensive but fairly tasty airport pizza at the "Infield
Terminal" (you take a bus there from Terminal 1; it's a building with just
a bunch of boarding areas) from a nice Indian lady who had just finished
serving three middle-aged busybody flight attendant women who demonstrated
pretty much all the feared T.O. stereotypes in a short couple of minutes
(rude to server, catty, wouldn't even bring coffee over to one another
when it was ready) . . . anyway it left a bad impression, especially
considering they were AC flight attendants (not on my flight, as it
turned out).

Reading material: Avoiding the possible lefty trifecta of Naomi Klein's
No Logo, Michael Moore's Stupid White Men and a collection
of post-9/11 Noam Chomsky essays (I've already read much of the latter two
online), I opted instead for Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of
Human Societies by Jared Diamond and How The Universe Got Its
Spots by cosmologist Janna Levin.

On the plane, I met a pediatrician named Nick from California. He was
surprised that I was from Canada because I "sound American", which is
further support for my theory that Western Canadians have a nearly
identical accent to West Coast Americans, even all the way down
California (extreme surfer dudes excepted).

Posted by warcode at September 06, 2003 05:56 AM