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A single note about Toronto
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31 July to 1 August 2004
I still need to tell you about the trip to Chesley the day before I left Canada, but I'm sitting at the airport and I may as well write out what's happening now. We got to the airport a couple of hours before my flight to Dublin , and joined the queue for check-in. There was an exchange student from France in front of us who got us to mind her baggage while she went to the toilet. We talked to her a little and found that she also finds orange cheese to be a bit strange, but she doesn't consider cheddar to be cheese. While she was in Canada (I forget where, exactly) in the winter time, the temperature got down to -39C.
A while after the Rixes had left, and just as I got to the last turn in the queue, there was an announcement that due to network computer problems there would be no checking in at this time, and we would be notified when the problem was resolved. In the mean time we could get a free drink.
I found comfort in the thought that somewhere, a network geek was working on the problem. Not an incompetent manager, not an evil flight-delaying monster, but a network geek. S/he would either be grinning gleefully or smashing pieces of hardware in frustration, but either way it would be a network geek deciding my fate.
Some time after that I heard a staff member utter particularly strange comment into her walkie-talkie. Whoever comes up with the best explanation for this wins a photograph of a camera. She said, 'No guys, it only looks like cranberry juice.'
A while later I heard someone say 'I am not going manual... are they nuts or something? That's so much work!' At 11:00p.m, there was an announcement that we should all return to the check-in desks, and that the network problem had been fixed. Remember my flight was supposed to have left at 10:20. At 11:24 the same old announcement about there being a network problem was repeated. Soon afterwards they started checking people in manually, writing out boarding passes by hand and everything. I was thinking about how cool it would be to have a handwritten boarding pass. How many people get handwritten boarding passes these days? They'd almost be collectors items, for strange values of 'collector'.
The people going to Frankfurt were called first, and then those going to London. Nobody called for the other flights, but at some point I saw the exchange student go through for her flight to Paris. After an hour or so it was announced that the London flight had to leave, even though not everybody was on board. I heard later that pilots are only allowed to begin a flight up to two hours after the flight was scheduled to begin, and they'd already stretched that to three hours, so they could either let the flight go and leave 30 passengers behind, or cancel the flight and inconvenience the 250 passengers who had already boarded.
Most people could get a flight to London the next day, but some were facing days of waiting for their connecting flights. I heard somebody saying that twelve of the passengers who had checked into the Paris flight had been turned back, because the plane couldn't wait five minutes. Their luggage had also been checked in, and was not on the plane, or anywhere else the person could find. Later I spotted the French exchange student in the crowd. A few of us chatted to a staff member about it and found out that the network problem was due to Bell Canada cutting a cable. The whole of Air Canada was unable to do electronic check-ins, except at one airport which was using a different system. So much for my romantic notions of a network geek saving the day.
Naturally I wondered if they'd sent my flight off without mentioning it, so I asked someone -- they had. We all had to wait around while alternative flights, connecting flights, free hotels, taxis and shuttles were arranged. I think it was about 3:30a.m. by the time I was seen to -- I was booked on the same numbered flight, same time, the next day. I waited a while to use an Air Canada employee's phone to call Tony and tell him not to wait for me at the airport, but I wasn't able to get through.
I wasn't too worried... my first air-travel related drama, resulting in a night in a posh hotel in Toronto and a half a day to look around the city if I wish. It gives me something to write about. Another bonus is that I'll probably sleep until midday (checkout time is 1p.m.) so I'll be much more awake when I arrive in Dublin at 9:45 local time (4:45 Toronto time). What's more, my travel insurance policy says:
Travel Delay - which is less than 36 hours
If you are delayed for at least 6 consecutive hours due to an Event, We will reimburse You for reasonable extra costs You have to incur (including additional meal costs) due to the delay. Receipts are required.
There's only one reasonable response to that. Room service!
I was told to take the elevator to the ground floor and catch a shuttle. Unknown to me, the elevator stopped at the wrong floor for some reason, so I got out, and saw the exchange student again. I was told the elevator does that a lot, so I tried again and made it to the ground floor, where there was a crowd of people waiting for a shuttle. The first shuttle filled up, and I was left waiting around talking to a photographer with a 12 megapixel digital camera (drool), who does computer graphics without a Mac, can you believe it? Another shuttle came about half an hour later and took us to the fancy Delta Toronto Airport West hotel. We had to wait a while in line there, due to there being so many of us. There were people sleeping on the couches in the lobby.
I got to my room at 4:30a.m, and called Tony. Air Canada said they'd reimburse the cost for the call, but I later found out they won't, which makes no difference really because my insurance will probably cover it and it wasn't a major expense anyway. The whole hotel is rather Marriott-esque, but I like it more. My room has a couch, which the Marriott did not have. I think that might have something to do with this room only having one bed. The room also has a fridge, water filter, and bathrobe. This must be costing Air Canada a packet, and they'll be suing Bell Canada for every cent.
I thought for a while that the room had free internet, as there was an ethernet socket on the lampshade and the booklet did not mention a charge. I called for an ethernet cable, and got a phone cord instead, which was pretty useless. When I checked out I saw that internet costs $9.95 per night.
It's now 6a.m, I suppose I should go to bed, since I can't actually see the sun rising from my window so there's no point staying up for that.
Okay, now it's Sunday and I'm in Dublin at last. After sleeping in the posh hotel and eating a delicious Hawaiian chicken stir fry, I browsed through some pamphlets, established that there was nothing nearby that was worth seeing, and caught a shuttle to the airport. I sat around doing nothing particularly interesting for a while, then went to check in my bag, six hours before my flight. Coincidentally I ended up just behind the photographer/graphics geek I'd talked to several times the day before.
I went through and did a bit of shopping in the duty free stores, had some dinner, waited around... it was pretty uneventful. The salad I ordered was advertised as containing Canadian cheddar, which I took to mean it would have that weird orange stuff rather than ordinary yellow cheddar. But strangely enough, the cheese in the salad was yellow. I guess that means orange cheese is un-Canadian.
As I was six hours early for my flight, most of the people waiting at the gate I was in were waiting for earlier flights. It just so happens that the flight at that gate before mine was the one to Paris. I saw the exchange student one more time, rushing to board her plane just after most of the other people had boarded. So, if my story is not interesting enough, at least you know that she got where she was going too.
I was put in 'super comfort' class, which has the same seats as business class but not the service. It was indeed comfortable, I actually got a few hours sleep on the plane, and as a super comfort passenger I was one of the first to board. The in-flight edition of CBC News had an item about the slight possibility of catching West Nile virus in Killarney, which made all my mosquito bites feel just that little bit more uncomfortable.
I was impressed by how few questions were on the immigration form I had to fill out on the plane, I remembered the forms for Canada and the USA being more complicated. As it turned out, I may as well have not filled out the form at all, because the lady just said something like, 'That's fine, go on through' without looking at the form or my passport. She might not have even seen that I had a passport, since I was holding it underneath the form. After getting my suitcase I figured out that as I had nothing to declare and had flown from a non-EU country, I should go through the green lane. I walked straight through, past somebody who was minding his own business behind a desk. I could have been an escaped convict smuggling rare cocaine-addicted turtles with a form of mad cow disease, for all they knew.
Anyway, I walked out and tried to look conspicuously lost for a while, in the hope that Tony would spot me. He didn't, so I sat down and called him on his cellphone (luckily my cellphone had just enough charge left.) He found me easily enough, and now I'm sitting at his house preparing to meet the eleven people he's invited for lunch.
Later still -- Teresa cooked a delicious three course lunch! After talking with the guests for a while I realised my plan to use the flight delay to get enough sleep had not worked, and I had to go to sleep for a couple of hours. Soon after I got up everybody left. Now it's midnight, a much more reasonable time to go to bed, so that's what I'll do.
Down the river without any pants on
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28 July 2004
Today Patricia and I went down the Saugeen River in a canoe, which is a traditional Paisley activity. It was good fun. We hit a few rocks, and a few times Patricia had to get out and push because the water was too shallow, but that's to be expected.
The men were too chicken to go down the river (at least, that's my story and I'm leaving the country before anyone can dispute it) so Patricia did all the steering and decision making from the stern while I provided raw muscle power from the bow. I bet you didn't think I had any raw muscle power. We were both wearing swimsuits, which don't really count as pants in my opinion.
As usual, I saw all sorts of interesting wildlife. First there were a hole lot of wholes in a cliff, made by cliff swallows. Next we saw eight Canada geese, which I don't think I got a very good picture of. Through most of the trip there were kingfishers and swallows around, and two great blue herons which would fly a bit further down the river whenever we caught up to them. At one point we had a huge number of whirligig beetles whirling around on the surface of the water next to the canoe. They're really fun to watch -- they make nice patterns in the water as they move.
George took some pictures from the shore of us paddling. His camera is much better than mine, so he could zoom in quite a bit and even shot this movie of us.
Animals
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27 July 2004
Today we went to Keady Market again. I picked up a few cheap CDs and some other bits and pieces, but by far the highlight of the outing was the Tiger Paw Exotics & Petting Zoo. There we were wandering through a market looking at all sorts of things for sale when we saw a tent with a $1 admission charge, and a sign announcing there were ring-tailed lemurs, porcupines, a kangaroo, and other exotic animals inside. I had been hoping I'd get to see a porcupine in my remaining time here, but never expected to see a ring-tailed lemur.
Sure enough, inside the tent were a red kangaroo, some Japanese silky chickens, an African crested porcupine, some ring-tailed lemurs, fennec foxes, capybara, Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, a miniature horse, a miniature Zebu cattle, two baby cougars, and an alpaca... all without any pants on! Wow. I feel like I'm playing Pokemon Snap... I don't think my pictures are very good but I've taken pictures of so many different creatures that I must get a good score.
The baby cougars and the lemurs were very, very cute, and now that I've seen a kangaroo I'll never have to go to Australia. I'd seen alpacas before but I'd never taken pictures of them. Everything else was new to me, and it was awesome to see them all.
On the way out we met somebody who had bought a small bunny at the market. I took a photo of that because it was so cute. There are too many rabbits in New Zealand, so there's nothing particularly novel about seeing one, but I'm a tourist now so I take pictures of everything. Maybe I should take a picture of a sheep just to be silly. Just outside the market I saw some hollyhocks, which I also took a picture of. I remember reading a book which mentioned hollyhocks many years ago, and wondering what they were. I have no idea whether there are hollyhocks in NZ, I just know that I haven't had them pointed out to me since I read that book.
After Keady we went to the beach at Port Elgin, and this time I went swimming. It was a bit of a strange experience. It looks like the ocean, sounds like the ocean (there are even seagulls) and is about as cold as the ocean, but there is no salt in the water and no seaweed. Shells were small and few. I'm told there's about six inches between high and low tide marks, so there's no danger of anything being washed away while you're swimming. Actually, I think it was like the ocean with all the mildly unpleasant bits taken out... although I would have preferred it to be as warm as George lake. What a great lake.
Oot and Aboot
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26 July 2004
Today Patricia and I went out to see various things while George was at work in Wiarton. We started out visiting Bruce's caves. We walked through the bush a bit to get to them, hence the bush pictures.
After that we went to the beach at Georgian Bay, which was as stony as the caves. Georgian Bay is on Lake Huron, but Lake Huron, being the fifth largest lake in the world, is large enough that it looks like the sea. Many of the stones contained fossilised of shellfish or coral, which was a new experience for me. I've taken a picture of some of the fossils we found, along with a non-fossilised crayfish claw.
Our next task was to track down Wiarton Willie, a world-famous albino groundhog whose job it is to make predictions on the coming of spring each groundhog day. I took a few pictures of a statue of Willie, and then we went to his residence. Unfortunately Willie did not feel like making an appearance at that time, so we went on to Sauble Falls.
Sauble falls is not as impressive as Niagara Falls, but it's easier to take pictures of. Basically it's a series of very small waterfalls, like an uneven rocky staircase. There were a lot of people playing in the water. I spotted a small snake in the grass, and took a few pictures of it. I lost track of it when it slithered away, but located it again near where Patricia was standing... I assumed she had followed it. In fact, the snake near her foot was a different snake entirely, while the original snake was not far behind it. Patricia got quite a fright when I pointed out the second snake. Both were mostly harmless, but snakes are not exactly cute and cuddly.
After braving the snakes we felt adventurous enough to walk on a perfectly stable boardwalk which was, according to a nearby sign, dangerous. From there I took several more pictures of the falls. Later I took pictures of the Rankin river from both sides of the aptly named Rankin River bridge.
Next we went back to Wiarton Willie's enclosure, where Willie was in full view. I got quite a few pictures of Willie... the first groundhog I ever captured in a photograph and he's a famous one!
We decided to have dinner out, so after picking up George from work (where he fixes Macs) we went to Sauble beach and had something to eat. Sauble beach is another beach on Lake Huron... this one is sandy and has the occasional zebra mussel shell. It looks an idealised 'real' beach, all smooth and flat. Near the beach I noticed a trampoline park, which I thought was a great idea. There are several trampolines next to each other, with boards around the outside at the right level so that it's possible to just walk straight onto the trampoline, and it's impossible to fall off one onto the ground.
The last stop was to check out Rob's design of the logo for the Two Chicks cafe.
That night I was given a crash course on Canadian comedy, in the form of a Wayne & Shuster video.
Rices Everywhere
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25 July 2004
Well, I've survived the Rix family reunion. They seem a pretty nice bunch, not all as strange as Rob, though I haven't decided whether that's a bad thing or not. There was a lot of good food.
Before the reunion, some more distant relatives came for a visit. One was from Bolivia, and she confirmed my story that orange cheese is weird. Hooray for the eaters of yellow cheese!
Somebody had a little Harley Davidson which was called a 'chopper' -- I don't know the technical details of what it is but a lot of people had fun riding it. It was difficult to get pictures of people riding it since there is a second or two between when I press the button on my camera and when the picture is actually recorded, but I did somehow manage to get a picture with the chopper right in the frame as it was going past.
I won't bore you with a whole lot of pictures of people you don't know. Instead I'll bore you straight off the bat with a picture of the infamous Tim Hortons cafe. I've included a few pictures of groups of people just so you can have an idea of the general atmosphere (mostly Nitrogen) and much-requested pictures of Rob, George and Patricia. There is also a picture of Melanie looking like she's been set on fire.
I took some pictures of the fire and the sunset just because they look nice. There's nothing particularly Canadian about those pictures except that you can see a maple tree in the sunset. There really are a lot of maple trees in Canada. I heard there is also a lot of bacon but the only evidence of that I've seen is that you can add bacon to any McDonald's burger for 59 cents. People really do say 'eh' more than I'm used to, but only where it makes sense.
I also took pictures of the three mourning doves which have been cooing in the backyard the whole time I've been here.
The night of the reunion Rob and I watched The Man Who Knew Too Little because I didn't think I'd seen it and Rob considers it compulsory viewing. It turned out I had watched most of it on TV one night while having coffee at Miriam's place, but it was fun to watch it again and see the first ten minutes. The next night I watched The Last Unicorn with Patricia -- I hadn't seen that movie since the day I discovered my Mac could record sounds. Certain sound clips in that movie are very familiar to me. I've read the book since the last time I'd seen the movie, so I noticed which bits were left out.
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