Clayton’s travel day

 The view from my window this morning (good luck fire fighting people)

You might not remember the Clayton’s ad. The tag line was ‘the drink you have when you’re not having a drink’. Today was the travel day you have when you’re not traveling. It was more of a sit still with a surging mass of people and listen to the ever lengthening delay/miss your connecting flight announcements kind of day.

Our 1 hour wait at airport no.1 (Halifax) morphed into five hours, resulting in a three hour wait at airport no. 2 (Calgary). So that’s eight hours waiting & five hours of flying add in the time difference flying across this huge country and this has been a long long day or it will be. I’m posting this from airport no. 2 bc my body clock will be telling me it’s 3am by the time my head hits the pillow at the lovely Opus hotel tonight.

At least we had plenty of time at airport no. 2 to enjoy our surprising last 4-of-us dinner together and a leisurely chat. It was perhaps not the ideal last day together but actually days like this are better together if you’re lucky enough to have great travel buddies. You work together, buoy each other up, have a brains trust for decisioning and generally find a way to a laugh whenever it’s most needed. 

We arrived, along with a few hundred thousand of our fellow frustratees, at airport no. 3 (Vancouver) approx 17 or 18 hours after we started out this morning. Yes we’re still in Canada - not Sydney. How the genius Uber driver found us in the chaos, for chaos it was, is down to his genius and MGM/Tony’s persistence. Although he was not at all convinced we’d get our luggage in ‘yeah mate it’s goin’ in’ (MGM); or if he could fit all of us in ‘yes’ we can do it’ (Wendy). Just as well she’s tiny, look at her (or rather don’t it had been a long day on the road & it was not fair to take this pic) squeezed into a space the size of a suitcase.

And I think he might actually have been a little scared when we said we have more luggage to pick up on the way ‘trust us it’ll work’ (Tony) we were NOT letting this guy go without us. We did manage to stop at Erin’s place and pick up the bags she’s been looking after for us ‘put them on my lap, they’ll fit’ (me) … what a team!

Four tired, bedraggled Aussies staggered in to the Opus with extreme gratitude at around midnight (3amish by our body clocks) &  closed the traveling circle, arriving back where we started a couple of weeks ago. And for the Allans, this invitation to horizontalness has never been so welcome. 

The Bests room was a startling, see it through closed eyelids orange. Not sure how conducive to sleep that will be, but 18 hours on the road will certainly help.