OK, we made it to Halifax.

The flights weren’t that bad, but The Day After wasn’t great.

First, let me plug WestJet. Woo-hoo! Although the seats seem a little narrower than on Air Canada, the service is so much better. Plus, having the TVs in each headrest facing you is *so* much better when travelling with a toddler. Further, our gate checked stroller was at the door to the airplane well before we were each time we deplaned (compare to AC where we’ve had to wait until the whole flight crew has left before we’ve had the stroller given to us).

Aidan travelled well. The first leg was to Edmonton, just a bit over an hour from YVR, and not enough time for anything to happen. We had around 2 hours in the Edmonton airport (which desperately needs a reno) and then boarded the over-night flight to Halifax. Aidan went to sleep about a half hour after we left Edmonton (right according to plan, but without the children’s Gravol we tried to give him). He slept for a little over two hours (not according to plan), waking up just before we crossed over Quebec City (yes, the GPS worked great in the plane). By my reckoning, that meant that he woke around 7:30 AM the day we left, slept for an almost 2 hour nap that afternoon, and then was awake until about 10pm. Another 2 hour nap (the one on the plane) and he was awake until noon-ish Halifax time after we arrived (8am Vancouver time). He had *another* 2 hour nap, and then was awake until 8ish Halifax time. *ANOTHER* two hour nap, and then he was ready to go again. We finally got him down around midnight Halifax time. Summing it all up, over 36 hours he had 4 two hour naps. We were a little ragged, especially since we really didn’t get any sleep on the plane, and Gwen had a 2 or 3 hour nap the morning we arrived.

As we bounced into Edmonton, we were coming up behind some thunderstorms. It must have still been raining, because there were some brilliant rainbows evident as we were landing.

The flight was pretty uneventful, but I saw the most spectacular lightning storm I’ve ever seen somewhere over north-eastern Alberta or northern Saskatchewan (couldn’t get to the GPS). Orange lightning flashed several times per second for a good twenty minutes or more in a huge storm that was probably a hundred kilometres away from us. It was pretty dark, so the whole storm was quite visible. I’ve never seen lightning so intense and frequent, and I can’t imagine what kind of racket it must have been making. Not so much rolling thunder as a fully artillery barrage, I imagine. Fortunately we were far enough away from the storm that it wasn’t affecting the flight.

It was a bit of a blur, but we arrived in Halifax without incident. The fog was so thick when we landed that we could barely see the plane at the next gate over. The boy was really well behaved on the plane. The luggage was out so fast that it seemed like it was there before we were.

The day was spent trying to get our bodies adjusted without melting in the stifling heat and humidity. Oy, we’ve become real West Coasters.

Today was much better. We got up around 10am, and the boy slept through until noon! Gwen’s sister Mary came over for a visit, and Grampa John came home (he had been at sea when we arrived). Between these visitors, and being outside running around in the park-like backyard that my parents have, the boy was in Nirvana. The boy went quite willingly to bed around 8pm, and has only had one brief waking spell, so hopefully we’ve rounded the corner.

More later…

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.

So, we’ll be in Halifax on the 31st of July.

I leave on the 14th of August, and Gwen and Aidan will be leaving on the 22nd. Hopefully Gwen survives the transcontinental trip with Aidan without too many emotional or physical scars.

Gwen put the flights together today and happened on a seat sale that saved us well over $1300! Good job dear!

If you want to meet up with us, drop me a line before we head; I think timing’s going to be tight for the whole trip.

So, Dad learned a bit more about weather karma last week.

First, he posted this photo of his as-yet unused snowblower. Then he made some snide comments, referring to the white precipitation that both the West Coast and Northern Ontario had. After the predictable feedback, guess what happened? It snowed in Halifax. Not just a little snow either. Lots of snow. Then, it snowed again a few days later.

Fortunately Dad’s got a pretty good sense of humour. For proof, I received this today:

(I’m having problems with the video plugin. Try this link first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIfd_RWsMBc)

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.