You're Too Old to Get Impatient. I Did It Anyway and Nearly Got Booted Out of the Airport

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Suganth on Unsplash

Post Covid travel has changed. Anyone notice? READ THE SMALL PRINT

Dear Reader: This article was done in fits and starts in real time as I packed and got ready to board a plane today. Heartfelt thanks to the Universe for the lesson in humility and to Kristi for taking my call and effectively reminding me to find my funny.

A wiser traveler would have checked with

Kristi Keller

, who lives close to the Calgary airport where I am now cooling my heels, and organized an overnight with a friend.

There, on my way to storied Yellowknife, where I hope to see aurora borealis, I could likely have seen plenty from her house, cuddled up with Desi the dog and actually had a real breakfast as well as fine time with a fellow traveler, very funny person and Dog Snob extraordinaire.

But NO!

I had to do it the hard way.

First, background. Those of you who love a good travel deal, and I surely do, these days you really have to read the small print. I got an email from Going.com, formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights (read the small print on those flights) to get a super-reduced fare to Yellowknife.

Where?

That’s the Indigenous headquarters of many nations of Canadian origin, on Slave Lake, and home to more sightings of aurora borealis (240 days a year) than anywhere else.

Typical fare, close to $1500. My fare, about $238.00

Read the small print.

I was in. Bucket list item, I am all in. I bought the tickets, made plans, failed to check that Kristi was within ridiculously close shouting distance of the city where I would change planes, which would have changed my plans. I headed out with minimal stuff. I paid an $45 extra for a checked bag stuffed with only enough to wear much the same thing for five days straight, handwash my undies and clean myself enough to not frighten off the grizzlies.

Interestingly that checked bag fit the dimensions of the allowable overhead compartment space. But I’m ahead of myself.

I failed to read the small print.

I prepaid for a pricey cottage on Slave Lake where I could walk everywhere and see the lights from a picnic table just outside my door. Bought a pricey ride on a bush plane. I was ready. All in. Couldn’t wait. Brought a bottle of NoDoz to make SURE I stayed up late enough to see the light show.

So as I sat at the Westjet gate in Portland waiting for my flight, having checked one bag and my small carryon ignored by the check-in crew in Portland, I got a series of texts.

Your flight is delayed.

WAIT! Nope. Your second flight is cancelled. Here are meal vouchers and a hotel voucher.

You’ll be overnighting in Calgary (where Kristi lives close to the airport. Just saying).

Oh, and we don’t leave Portland…for five hours.

Have a nice day :-)

So I fire off a note via chat to Kristi, having failed to remember if she was close to Toronto or Calgary, and having failed to explain that I was stuck in Portland. She wanted to meet that night.

My days begin at about 3:30 am like it or not. Early morning for Kristi is 7:30, which for me is half the day gone. That is her grumpy time. About 4 pm is when my schnozz starts heading for the soup bowl. Anything after 7 pm is MY grumpy time. I am struggling to stay awake, compos mentis and marginally civil.

I finally landed in Calgary after 9 pm, having been up since about 3 am, so tired I was punch-drunk. Later tonight? Nope. I was hungry for a decent meal, and hopeful that the vouchers would cover what I considered a decent meal.

All I could manage was to stumble into the expensive restaurant at the premium hotel The Clique (remember the word premium) and beg for a salad. This having just been given a laundry list by my doctor of All the Foods You Can No Longer Eat, which is, everything, except, perhaps a lettuce leaf.

Thirty dollars got me a small handful of Romaine lettuce, a bit of chicken, enough garlic to stun a buzzard off a shitwagon (I can’t have garlic so I tried to wash it off), and a tiny bowl of grapes for which I was charged $5. I will withhold comment.

The smell of the garlic so overwhelmed my hotel room that I had to wrap the box in the trash can plastic. It was enough to embalm the Orange Pumpkin (we should all be so lucky); at least, this close to Halloween, it likely wiped out a five-km circle of vampires.

Even with having washed the chicken, the garlic coated everything inside my mouth and likely all the way down my alimentary canal. I’m sure the microbiome down there screamed

WHAT THE FUCK???

Bet the hotel plumbing had the same reaction.

The desk clerk had cheerily informed me that I had TOTALLY MISSED the incredible aurora borealis show the night before.

How kind of you to let me know.

I fired off a note to Kristi, now feeling genuinely foolish, noted her phone number and collapsed. I’d be awake in no time.

And was, this morning, at about 3 am. The room stank like Van Helsing Central. My breath would have sideswiped a musk ox. I swear I melted the glass on my phone when I checked the time.

Then, the shower.

I honestly don’t know what people are thinking when they try to premium something simple like a shower. I’m perfectly aware that’s not a verb but in this story it is.

Kristi and I have both traveled to places where getting clean can be complicated, and a simple stream of warm water is a bloody luxury.

I reached for the Clique’s shower controls and was met with a floor-to-ceiling lineup of wholly-unecessary shower heads, many of which had been angled towards the shower door and left that way by the cleaning crew.

The resulting full-scale blast would have scoured a stretch limo, much less a person.

So now the floor is flooded, it’s slick, and all the towels are, natch, at the other side of the bathroom. You have to navigate said slick, flooded floor (because the bathmat is completely soaked) to get more towels.

Of course you do. Why consider the potential of a slip and fall?

Oh, and the towels at this premium hotel are stringy from constant washing, sporting long white strings like errant strands. Those are rags, folks. You demote them appropriately and remove them from your, ahem, premium bathroom.

Then there’s this: we are an aging population. If you’re past forty and your eyesight ain’t so good, and your balance is a bit compromised (I’m all three, albeit thank god I do balance work), this is a setup for a catastrophic accident, all in the name of premium.

There is no reason at all to have lots and lots and lots of spray features when water runs south on the body. Because, well, gravity.

But that’s just me.

The coffee in the room is okay, but you’re supplied with that godawful cheap coffee creamer that is little more than chemicals designed to tickle your tastebuds while damaging everything else. Bleah.

This is what premium gets you these days? Fake cream?

For those of us who have traveled for decades, what we might have judged as top dollar and deserving of the term premium years ago is as dead and buried as all those vampires my garlic breath killed off.

The bus back to the airport is at 8 am, so no time to head to the overpriced premium restaurant to pay $25.00 for a decent cuppa Joe.

I jest. Not by much.

By 7:30 I’ve repacked all my stuff, get my carryon ready to go- the carryon that the Westjet Portland crew said and did nothing about- and got the bus to the airport. There are all kinds of ads on the wall for departing travelers urging them to head South, presumably Florida.

Not today, Sparky. I grew up there, and Milton is making landfall as I write this, and he’s going to cut a swath that will level my home town and a whole lot more.

But of course the Democrats know that because, well, they control the weather. Either the weather is a punishment from God for not being a MAGAhat or it’s Democratically-controlled, but if Trump were in the White House it wouldn’t happen. You will forgive me- I am angry about this because I have friends and family in Florida and such things impact them directly.

I digress but today I can’t help it. I need decent coffee and food and I need to locate my funny bone. Might as well take a potshot at this, but that does not forgive the potential impact on people in dire need and frightened to death right now. That’s another article

Then the fun started. The Calgary Westjet crew said I couldn’t take the carryon, pointing out on my ticket in capital (but very small letters)

NO CARRY ON ZONE

I’m not proud of what followed. At this point I’m tired, as so many of us are, I’ve already lost one $125 night of accommodation in Yellowfeather (did I mention that they didn’t give a damn that it wasn’t my fault that a flight got cancelled?), I’m living with a dead skunk in my mouth and I really want to get to Starbucks.

Irritated at myself, but damned glad I had allowed nearly three hours to make the flight, I was reduced to sitting on the floor tearing apart my bags to repack in a failed effort to get that damned carryon to mush into a small enough shape.

Pissed and embarrassed, my Super Experienced Adventure Traveler Ego offended, I reorganized, repacked at lightning speed. Plenty of stuff cannot go in the hold: lithium batteries for my heated socks and gloves, my meds, my computer.

No sane person puts that in the hold. The batteries are illegal, so there’s that. No matter what I did, the carryon refused to fit into the tight confines of the metal measuring box which, up to this point, I’d never had to use.

The rules had changed and I had been left behind. I felt awkward, antique-yand clumsy. And even more angry for all that, right?

Finally I emptied the whole damned thing out and even then, it wouldn’t smush down.

If I wanted my carryon, I’d have to pay another $115. I’m sorry, that won’t fly. It’s an old POS, on its last legs, and not worth that much money. Surely…..

I was angry, complained, but then remembered: I might be having an asshole moment but I AM A GENIUS.

Deep in the belly of my main bag was a tinky, tiny Sea to Summit carryall, packed as a last-minute conceit that I might locate a moose skull that I just had to bring home.

Joke, please.

They don’t seem to make the one I have any more but they do make this, which is effectively the same thing.

Tiny…and a life saver

I pulled it out, whipped it open and emptied my carryon into it. Voila, it all fit. Not only that, it easily mushed into the measuring container that the supervisor (called in to deal with me) and the desk clerk were both angrily insisting that I accommodate.

If you’re not careful, I thought, I will lean over this effing counter and breath on both of you with this deadly morning-after profoundly foul garlic breath that eliminates vampires. Julia, Dark Queen of the Night Triumphs.

However, the problem was solved. The bag fit, everyone was satisfied if not happy, and I was free to head to the security line.

Feeling huffy, put-upon and dangerously close to being asshole-escorted-perp-walked out of the airport, I picked up my soft bag, my boarding receipts, and dumped my roller bag into a nearby trashcan.

The cleaning woman who was cleaning out the can eyed it greedily. It has plenty of life left, just not with me. Not in the world of shrinking overhead compartments. But wait, there’s more….in a moment.

Thereby relieved of my work carryon (which I will have to replace eventually) I got to the security line, my TSA pre-check credentials useless in Canada. With all the metal in my feet, my hip, hands and teeth I fully expected a strip search and yet another angry supervisor inspecting the inner lining of my sports bra for weapons of destruction and the name of the surgeon who inserted my breast implants. Happily no, but close.

It might have been the garlic breath but I was waved through swiftly. I’ll have to remember the garlic trick.

Finally I made my way to my gate. There sat a Starbucks.

Gawd, I’m saved.

I ordered a coffee with real cream and oatmeal. A small but decent meal to hold me over and possibly mask the deadly garlic breath that was hanging around me like a putrid cloud.

Drug-sniffing dogs are running in the other direction, right?

I happily hand over my credit card. Coffee and food.

Then the Starbucks employee comes out with a sad face.

What’s the ONE ITEM that Starbucks doesn’t have today?

Oatmeal.

Well, shit.

The Universe is getting even with me for being a cranky asshole self-righteous jerkoff traveler who hasn’t kept up with the times.

I fix up my coffee, find a seat, and call Kristi. There’s a delay as my cheap-ass Android phone struggles to realize that we’re in Canada, Despite the fact that Kristi and Desi are barely a few miles away, there’s an echoing delay as though she’s in outer Mongolia.

We do get to talk, wherein she kindly informs me that yes, had I stayed with her, not only would I have had a FUN time, a DOG to play with, a DECENT BREAKFAST, I would probably have seen aurora borealis.

Photo by Marcelo Quinan on Unsplash

Which, just saying, Julia, were AMAZING just night before last. You missed it.

Kristi hasn’t traveled for five years for so many reasons. I’ve not traveled internationally for several myself, thanks to surgeries and PT and a hundred issues to fix my home.

Things have changed. Deals are no longer deals. The crew here at the Westjet counter said that the change to no carryon zones just happened in June. Unless you can travel to far desinations in the clothing on your back and all your gear crammed into your pockets, the so-called “deals” are pure marketing bullshit.

I walked into that trap headlong. My anger wasn’t so much at the desk crew but at myself for trusting and allowing myself to be suckered in to believing I got a deal.

Read the small print. Read the small print. Read the small print.

Kristi and I made a deal. I come up this way again, her house.

She comes down my way, she brings Desi and hangs out in my guest bedroom.

It was worth the overnight fiasco in Calgary to secure a convo with Kristi, whom I’ve “known” but not really known since our Medium.com days.

And to have someone who can laugh with me about travel shit, because well, if you travel, you get it.

But wait, there’s more.

Finally, I am in my seat, and with any luck at all on my way to Yellowknife.

As I sit here and watch people’s IQs drop as they load WAY too much stuff into the overhead compartment and stuff their jackets in there- which we are asked not to do- I realize -perhaps- why the airlines have had to do this.

People are now paying to be assholes to take up more than their fair share of storage space. They don’t want to put something under the seat in front of them. They don’t want to be inconvenienced so that other people have enough space. They want to jam their coats into the overhead compartments, taking up critical space that other travelers need for their carryons, because it’s just too damned much to put the coat in their laps.

I’ve watched this for more than fifty years. The small print is the airlines’ way of pushing back. If you want to overload the overheads, now you pay for the privilege of being a privileged jerk.

Truth?

I don’t blame them one bit.

Read the small print. Did I say to read the small print?

Stay with friends.

Bring your own food supplies.

Bring a small pillow and a little white noise technology (see Sound Oasis for ideas) to blot out the blotto passengers next to you as you sleep in chairs waiting for your flight to never show up.

Above all, if your intuition tells you to bring that may-never-need-it extra thing,

BRING IT.

It might just save your trip.

I’m going to go play.

Photo by Anna Gru on Unsplash

Thanks for laughing with me. Above all it this was fun to make fun of myself. If it was fun to read, please consider

Heartfelt thanks to Kristi for the kind reminder that fellow travelers get it, they can see the absurdity and hilarity, and that’s why they say, stay with me next time. If this article might be useful to someone you know returning to travel after a hiatus and who might need fair warning, please also consider