Our recent holiday demonstrated how travel can leave one feeling like a yo-yo.
Several months ago, after gladly accepting an invitation to look after our 21-month-old granddaughter in Northern Alberta while her parents took a holiday, I made reservations that would see us fly from Grande Prairie to New York via Edmonton and Chicago the day after our son and daughter-in-law returned home.
As expected, our week with the delightful Quinn was a joy. On Sunday, the day her parents were scheduled to return home, I checked our flight itinerary on the Internet and learned that we now had only 46 minutes to make a connection at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. A change in the itinerary also showed that we would arrive in one terminal and fly out from another. The flights were booked through Aeroplan, so I called to express my concern about the short connection time at the large airport. A helpful representative eventually offered to reschedule us on a flight that would give us an additional hour to make the change. Problem solved, I thought.
A short time later we got a call from our son. Their flight schedule was in question because of airplane problem and they might be unable to get to Grande Prairie as scheduled, he said. Eventually he reported that they would have to stay overnight in Calgary, but would arrive in Grande Prairie at 8:30 the following morning. Our flight out of the same airport was scheduled for 10 a.m. Fortunately, they arrived on time and we (almost) reluctantly stood in the Grande Prairie airport terminal and turned the most beautiful baby in the history of the world over to her relieved parents. Problem solved, I thought.
Our uneventful flight to Edmonton led us to the departure board where we learned our connection to Chicago was delayed by about 90 minutes. When the plane finally took off, the pilot apologized for the delay and promised to try to make up some of the time lost. We arrived in Chicago a half hour quicker than expected, but still an hour later than scheduled. Run, was the advice of our flight attendant when I queried her about our connection. We didn’t run, but walked at top speed through the seemingly endless corridors, arriving just in time to board our flight to New York. Problem solved, I thought.
Our plane took off on time, much to our relief. Then we learned that once again there was no food or even snacks to be offered on United Airlines domestic flights. We would arrive in New York’s La Guardia Airport after 10 p.m. without having had dinner. Oh well. In fact, the plane landed 20 minutes ahead of schedule and, as we walked toward the exit to catch a taxi ride into Manhattan I commented that we should only have been landing at that moment. I called our B&B owners to inform them of our imminent arrival. All problems solved, I thought.
Then we pushed through the exit door, only to find a throng of people waiting for a cab. Perhaps 200 were in the line that snaked ahead of us. The taxi and bus traffic was chaos. Just over an hour later, we finally boarded our taxi, where we learned that a car had caught fire further along the road. That explained the delay.
Our B&B owners had provided instructions for the cab ride to Lexington Avenue, explaining that while most drivers are honest, “the fruit basket isn’t complete without a lemon”. I chose not to instruct the driver on which route to take and I was pleased to see that he took the same roads as the ones we had been told would get us to our destination most directly. Problem solved, truly.
Our Eastern European driver drove like he was in a race, fast and competent, and in no time at all we were knocking on the door of our bed and breakfast. It seemed impossible that only 36 hours earlier I had been negotiating our flight schedule and now, after several glitches, we had finally arrived at our destination. Our experience as figurative travelling yoyos was quickly forgotten as we settled into our accommodations, ready to take on whatever the Big Apple would throw our way.
Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.