Frozen Wings (aka: Toronto How We Hate Thee)
Entry posted by Janus
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FOR SCIENCE! (2)
Frozen Wings (AKA: Toronto how we hate thee)
Yes, you are seeing correctly. I am keeping some sort of a schedule. This is the SECOND night of FOR SCIENCE! And hopefully I will continue to be inspired enough to write MOAR AND MOAR.
However I will say that it is difficult to pull a subject out of my b….rain, every day. So PLEASE do submit ideas for what you want to see me write about, PLEASE.
Anyhow, this time it is a short story about a LOVELY TRIP I TOOK TO NOWHERE.
Enjoy!
Our story begins, as most (not all, mind, but most) do: Somewhere around the beginning and the end—not quite in the middle, but certainly somewhere in the vicinity of the start—or so the rumor goes.
Now isolating the exact beginning of this sad, sad tale is difficult simply for the fact that most often when people are beginning a story they will begin with the dawning of a new day. Often drawing upon that most wonderful of plot devices, the blank space.
You know the one I'm talking on, the blank space that the main character sees just before their eyes snap open and their epic adventure begins!
Problem one: I didn't sleep at all that night. No, I don't mean fitfully, I mean I didn't sleep. The eyes did not close all night—why? Because I'm clearly insane, most of you pointed out this fact in my last entry.
Now I'll confess there is no problem two, but doesn't it look so much more impressive if I say "Problem one:" vs. just "The main problem:" That's what I thought, thank you for agreeing with me.
Now where were we? Ah yes, the beginning…or some variation thereof.
As I mentioned before I didn't sleep that night, not a wink. Instead I conversed most merrily with my friends and enjoyed the wonderfully seasonal cartoon: Batman Beyond (okay, so not so seasonal. BUT IT IS COOL SO YOU NOW SHUSH) In fact as I recall I had just finished the episode Earth Mover (Which is ridiculously creepy, by the way) before I looked over at my alarm clock and saw the emblazoned red numbers.
4:00 AM. Perfect.
With barely contained glee I sprung from my comfortable chair and tiptoed out of my room, sliding silently into the room of my parents and coughing politely to let them know that it WAS in fact TIME TO GO RIGHT NOW. My mother awoke almost immediately, my father took more convincing—ironically enough it was he who was supposed to be the easy one to wake up—after all he was the one who was going to drive me!
After roughly ten minutes he was ready, dressed and on his way. I grabbed all of my assorted baggage and met him in the darkened hallway…wearing my stylish shades. Why? Because they looked cool. Be quiet.
In another five minutes we were underway. Cramming the luggage into the car and sliding into our respective seats we were off.
The snow had been falling lightly for the past few days, so while the roads were not made any more difficult, there was a gentle frosting effect that was pleasant to look at. It helped me drift off slightly as we sped onto our destination. (Here drift off refers to the act of sleeping, rather than the act of slipping off the road and into one of the way ditches that would eagerly welcome our car)
Within a period of roughly 45 minutes we were there. I could see the nearly overwhelming glow of lights coming from the series of buildings, the many lights illuminating the tall shapes against the darkness of the night. We had finally arrived at the airport—and for once there was no line up, no crazy drivers, no insane rush. Can we say score? Yes, yes we can.
Anyhow, I slid from the front seat, grabbed my luggage and said goodbye to my dad. With that done I walked inside to go through BORING PROCESS NUMBER ONE.
For those of you unfamiliar with airports and air travel in general, there are a number of boring processes one must go through. I have compiled these into list form for your ease.
BORING PROCESS NUMBER ONE:
- (As I am traveling to a foreign country, I must do this) fill out an American Customs form so that they don't arrest me upon entry into the country YAY.
- Get my boarding passes printed off. Luckily most of this automated nowadays—though they make it a bit of a pain. It asked me to say EXACTLY WHERE I WAS GOING. I mean, country, city, street. Creeped out yet? Good.
- Print out luggage tags. This is a surprisingly complicated process that will drive many full grown men to their knees attempting to get the blasted thing to stick properly. Naturally I was able to do it with skill and poise—and only printed off one extra tag that I got in trouble for. (PROTIP: Canadian airlines don't have a silly "Checked bag" cost. We get up to two for FREEEEE)
I suppose I should also mention that because I AM A SILLY FOOL (And Air Canada/United Airlines are CONFUSING) I arrived at the international departures gate and tried to check in with United Airlines. I got my boarding pass from a boarding pass machine, and I filled out my customs form. However as I went to enter the line a polite man asked where I was going to be flying, I told him and he looked at me strange (but still polite!) and informed me that so long as it was IN Canada it was still THROUGH Air Canada.
So I got traipse ALL ACROSS THE AIRPORT from International Departures to Domestic before I could move on to Stage three of BORING PROCESS NUMBER ONE. And that's not even mentioning the ten minutes I spent in line. AREN'T AIRPORTS FUN KIDS?
After all of that, I grabbed my luggage, exited horribly long lineup NUMBER ONE and entered into BORING PROCESS NUMBER TWO (and reasonably large line NUMBER ONE)
BORING PROCESS NUMBER TWO:
- Walk through stage one security. This consists of giving your passport and boarding pass to the guards. Do not look at them cockeyed, do not yell at them. Chances are you will get through this stage of security unless you are hopelessly insane (Somehow I got through!)
- Remove shoes, coat, PSP, wallet, boarding passes, passport, and watch. Stick in bucket. Place carry on bag on the conveyor belt.
- Wait for security guard to stop talking to cute female compatriot, walk through metal detector.
- Attempt to hurriedly grab items from bucket and put them back in their place before people in the line behind me get frustrated.
- Find my departure gate
- WAIT.
So, being the intelligent young man I am, I ensured I would arrive two hours early. Expecting that due to the winter season the lines would be insane and I would have plenty to keep my attention occupied until the plane arrived.
BZZT. WRONG.
The airport was DEAD. It was DEADER than dead. I arrived at my gate before the STEWARD and STEWARDESSES. Let alone before the PILOTS.
Current time? Oh I'd say 5:00 AM—time my flight leaves? 7:00 AM. Oh joy.
So I attempted to help a fellow passenger find a Tim Hortons (There was none, by the way. She relented and gave in to the siren song of Starbucks) and then sat down for the long haul. I plugged in my PSP adapter and played some Earthbound (Everyone should play this game. It is crazy) until the time for boarding came. Yes, I played for two hours. Bite me.
The actual loading process is rather boring, but not really a process worth describing, so just make that fast forwarding sound (You know, from a VHS tape….you do know what that is, right?) and we'll skip along.
Ready?
Go!
Okay so I was in the plane and we'd just taken off (After delays! YAY) and was enjoying a gorgeous scenery of mountains. A note for those of you who may one day fly with me: I WANT THE WINDOW SEAT. GIVE IT TO ME NOW.
Naturally the sun and the mountains and the snow all created a truly beautiful image—but unfortunately such beauty cannot last forever, and soon we were entering the cloud cover (Which is also incredibly cool, by the way. It's like you exist in a timeless space where you go neither forward nor backward, neither up nor down. You just exist. It's funky)
Now naturally, being that at this point it had been over 24 hours without sleep, I was getting a bit tired. However I resisted the spell of sleep. Why, you ask?
Because every seat had a built in screen in front of them—and on each screen (Touch screen, by the way. REALLY BAD TOUCHSCREENS) you had the option of various forms of entertainment. I perused the TV channels and upon finding nothing interesting I decided to check the movies. Hrn.
Mama Mia, Dark Knight, Some Christmas Flick, some other movie…interesting flicks no doubt, but not quite what I was looking for. Luckily enough for me there were multiple categories under the movie selection, and I had simply checked the Hollywood section.
Well for a laugh I decided to check out the Family movies, after all, couldn't hurt, right?
Hn. Some movie I can't remember and…wait. No, it couldn't be.
WALL-E.
Glorious.
So I enjoyed my first ever viewing of Wall-E whilst soaring throughout the clouds on my way to Toronto. And then I passed out and slept for a bit.
I awoke to the sounds of them serving food and drinks, I purchased a chicken salad wrap (Actually it wasn't half bad!) and quenched my thirst with a cup of water and a can of ginger ale.
And then it was off again into the land of dreams. Or not so dreams. Sleeping with black space? Man, that sounded weird.
Anyhow, I put on some classical Mozart (Can you believe they had that in the entertainment console <3) and did the sleep thing as mentioned above.
Now it couldn't have been more than an hour before I felt the familiar "OW" in my ear of depressurization, and heard the wonderful crackle of the radio informing me of our descent into Toronto. They let us know that the conditions were…well, hectic to say the least. In fact we were dropping super slowly because the airport was so clogged up that we had to take a secondary route. Oh so comforting, yes?
Then finally we were below the cloud cover and could see the SNOW. Oh wait, that was Toronto airport? You're kidding me, all I saw was SNOW and more SNOW. Waaaait, that big snow lump over there kind of looks like a building. If you squint reaaaally hard.
Well, that was basically the condition of the airport. White. Very, very white.
Well we slowly descended, with the usual thump and bump of the wheels hitting the runway. Thankfully we didn't skid and slide into a snow bank (There were certainly enough!). But we sure did wait a good half hour at the gate before we were allowed off the plane. However I was in no real rush, my transfer flight didn't leave for another few hours. I dropped my sunglasses (Helpful for sleeping on a plane, by the way. Blocks out the BURNING STINGING SUN IN MY EYES AH GOD OW) but luckily a helpful passenger picked them up for me. Go him.
I said goodbye and thank you to the staff on my way off the flight, overall it really was a pleasant experience, albeit a pleasant experience on two hours of sleep (AT MOST). And stepped into Toronto Airport...
TO. BE. CONTINUED.
Neener, it's still over 2,000 words! HAH.
TOTAL WORD COUNT: 2,023
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