Wow, it was almost a month ago! I need to cast my mind back to remember what happened. Hmmmm. For the most part, the amount of visiting went down. We visited with Gwen’s grandparents and her Uncle Steve who was up from Boston. They have a nice place on Lake Pepeswick, and we snapped some photos:
We visited with Gwen’s Aunt Trish, whom we last saw at Steve and Megan’s wedding last year. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any pictures of Trish. We went out to her place in Eastern Passage one evening and the next day, she and Gwen went out to lunch. While Gwen was out, my parents, Aidan, and I visited my grandmother who was not too into the visit. Aidan enjoyed the attention from all the nurses and the other residents, though. And, all the space to run and explore! Ah yes, I also remember the rain. Torrential rain, blustery wind, far exceeding anything we see in Vancouver. And, it was just another Atlantic fall storm.
Let me see … Gwen and Mary went to a spa one of those days, and by all accounts it was nice and relaxing.
We also took a short trip to the Cole Harbour Dikes. Gwen and I were a bit sleep addled, and didn’t bring a change of clothes for The Boy, or a swim diaper for that matter. And, of course, he wanted to go running through the water. Recalling the exploding diaper incident, we tried to keep him from getting too wet. He was quite tired that day, so the trip to the beach was cut a bit short. It was there, however, that he decided he liked “walking” Nana Lorraine’s dog, Comet.
Other than that, it was reasonably low-key. We were starting to run out of steam. The grandparents got a little extra Aidan-time.
We left on the Friday, the results of which are recounted here. We left at 5pm Atlantic Time, which seemed like a good idea since we would have the whole day to spend with people, but in reality, we packed and then sat around waiting. It’s not that we couldn’t wait to leave, but by the time we packed, we really didn’t have any time to do anything before we had to leave for the airport.
And, after arriving at the airport, we had another of “those” experiences. First, trying to check-in, my ticket was recognized by the self check-in kiosk, but Gwen’s wasn’t. That meant we had to go to the “too dumb to work the kiosk” line. After getting through that line, the fine ticket agent found Gwen’s reservation and issued her the boarding passes. We checked the car seat — and were told that they didn’t have any bags to go around it! We would have saved the bag from the trip to Halifax as we were told (yeah, right) if the AC baggage handlers hadn’t destroyed it anyway. Plus, had we known, we would have brought a garbage bag — or something — to protect it. With some trepidation, secured all the straps as much as I could and kissed it goodbye. The other bad sign was that our boarding passes had “SBY” on them. I assume that meant standby which was pretty shocking since we had confirmed seats. Further, we didn’t have any seats assigned at all. Anyway, we went through security (again, the fast lane!) with no problems.
When we arrived at the departure gate, things looked pretty bleak. Apparently there had been a earlier flight to Ottawa that had been cancelled, and all its passengers were trying to get on our flight. I took our boarding passes to the gate agent and asked that he seat me, my wife, and Aidan all together, please. He looked pretty harassed (likely from the perturbed passengers from the cancelled flight) when he took the passes. We got our “new” boarding passes just as they announced preboarding. They put us in the very last row on the plane, in the crew seats. Wow, those seats have even less room than the normal chattel class seats. The plane was full, and a patient woman who did Soduku puzzles for the whole flight was seated beside us. The flight to Ottawa was pretty uneventful — it’s a short flight. Apparently Stockwell Day (sometime jetski rider, former Canadian Alliance leader, currently the Minister for Public Safety) was on the flight. Woop-dee-do.
In Ottawa, we exchanged some passengers. Our row-mate was placed closer to her husband, but someone else was put in her place. Fortunately the flight to Calgary was not full, and once airborne, that person was moved. This gave us the whole row to ourselves, but it was still very uncomfortable. Aidan was great on the flight from Halifax, and on this long leg he was … well, ok. He was fine until about midway into the flight when he started getting tired and grumpy. After some placating and some nursing, he stretched out on the middle seat and slept for a little bit. He woke up before we descended into Calgary still grumpy. Mind you, by this time, it was about 9pm Calgary time, or about midnight Atlantic time. Well beyond his bed time.
We spent about an hour in the Calgary airport, stretching our legs and ourselves. Aidan woke right up and was determined to see as much of the terminal as he could. Which was a surprising amount! The Calgary airport actually has a number of “play stations” (no, not the video game system) consisting of beads on rails, things to push, pull, prod, move, etc. They were actually pretty cool. These kept Aidan quite occupied. Gwen turned her cell on while were in the airport, and to our surprise, it rang. G. was calling to tell us that she had just dropped our car in the parkade at YVR and where to find it.
The flight from Calgary to Vancouver was pretty uneventful. We had normal seats, and it was a new plane, so we were actually pretty comfortable. There was no one seated between us, so once again we had the whole row. Aidan was wide awake for the whole flight. We landed in Vancouver without incident. We trundled down to the baggage claim, and surprisingly enough, our bags came out pretty quickly, and among the first few on the conveyor. The car seat came through special baggage, and much to my surprise and relief, seemed to have suffered no insult on the flight. We wheeled our baggage to our car, paid the ransom to get the car out of the parkade and drove home.
Aidan stayed awake on the drive home too.
It was about 11pm Vancouver by the time we got home. That’s 3pm 3am Atlantic time. And Aidan was still going! Anyway, he didn’t mind too much being put to bed, and neither did we.
OK. In the face of mounting pressure, we’ve decided to head to NS this summer. We hope to visit lots of people including my ailing cousin Pat, meet up with Gwynedd, Andrew, Galen, and their newborn Tallis, of course see my parents and the rest of the family. And do some geocaching. The timing’s tight, so we can’t get any coins made up, but I’ve got some ideas and a design already set.
