The plane, the plane!

The flight to Victoria was at six-areyoukiddingmefifty in the morning. I had planned to get my packing done during the afternoon before. Which stretched to the late afternoon, then to early evening which morphed into “I’m pretty sure I can just pack before I leave in the morning”. To which the beloved boy said “mom, you don’t HAVE any morning. So pack”. So I went to bed.

Oh relax. I couldn’t fall asleep anyway, so at midnight-ish I gave up even trying and packed. Forgetting some things, as it turns out but nothing drastic so no worries. Then some sleep. Truly only some, from somewhere around two until the alarm went of at four-fifteen.

Now for those of you that complain that I never leave early enough to catch whatever flight I am hoping to catch let me tell you a couple of things. First of all, I WOULD plan to get to the airport hours in advance if said Airport was Toronto International or JFK or somewhere similar. But this is REGINA. And coming home is just as simple, it’s VICTORIA. If I were flying out of Vancouver then, yeah, I’d leave hours before. But for smaller airports I don’t think hours are needed.

So that’s the first thing. The second thing is that I did promise my dad that I’d leave some extra time for an unexpected emergency. My delightful boy claims that when it is me, any disaster could hardly be termed unexpected. Hmmph. I disagree, but I also digress. The point is I did promise so I did have extra time. I was ready to leave at 4:40.

I started the car first, of course, because it was really cold out. Yeah, huge surprise there; Saskatchewan, freezing, at half past four in the morning in the middle of February. Went back into the house and Houdini dog decided that as it had been months since her last brazen escape, 4:40 am in minus 30 degree weather would be a great time to make a run for it. Which she did, leaping past me with NO CONCERN whatsoever when I went flying backwards into a snow bank. By the time I struggled to my feet she was a black dot against the whiteness of the street. A small black dot. A far away and gone black dot.

The one good thing about Houdini dog is that she is an idiot. Despite the fact that we never take her anywhere, if you can find her with the car she will happily jump into the back seat assuming you’re going to take her somewhere so awesomely exciting that it is totally worth giving up puppy freedom. We never do, but she always hopes. Stupid yes, but helpful. Because I did track her down and did get her home in a reasonable amount of time. Reasonable for a regular morning, not so good where there is a flight waiting. I was back at the house at 5:05.

So, quick good-bye to the boy (who was still hoping, apparently, that I’d let him take me to the airport and leave him in custody of the car), dash to the car and off to the airport. Found a parking space with only a moderate amount of trouble, and freezing the whole while (I had dressed for Victoria weather), I made it into the airport proper at half past five. Only to find a monstrous line….a line bigger than any I’d ever seen. More even than the year the summer games were here. Thank heavens for online booking! I got to go into the short line. One family ahead of me, and twenty minutes until the flight left.

There were two people dealing with the pre-checked line. At one counter was a family of too many, with more than the usual amount of bags. And nothing – truly nothing – seemed to be happening. Yeah, the check-in person was staring at her computer screen, but she wasn’t typing anything. And nothing was getting checked, and the people didn’t seem to be doing anything more than standing around.

The people ahead of me – family of three – seemed to be getting quite antsy. As was I, I must admit. The woman turned and asked me what flight I was on. I told her, and she said so were they. Everyone in the big line booked on that flight had been asked to move to the short line, but they were still waiting. And time was running out.

When they did get to the teller (not the screen-staring one, who was still staring) she said that they were on a flight leaving in fifteen minutes. And then she pointed to me and said “and she’s with us too, we all need to get on this flight”. Woohoo! So I got checked on with them, sort of. All I needed was to check my bags, as I had my boarding pass from the online check-in. She put an orange sticker on my boarding pass and told us to go to the head of the security line upstairs. I raced upstairs and the security line was HUGE. I rushed to the front and showed the person my boarding pass and said that I’d been told to bud in line (even having been told to do that it felt AWFUL. I am not by nature a line-cutter). She said I can’t do that. So I…well, I pretended I was deaf and/or stupid and went and put my stuff in the next gray bin and stood at the mark on the floor waiting to go through the metal detector. I had been very careful about not having anything on me that would make it beep. No jewelry, no belt, no underwire bra. And yet I beeped. So they made me sit down and take my boots off. So there I was, barefoot and sitting on a chair wondering what my brother-in-law would say if I missed the flight that he paid for.

I didn’t, of course. Miss the flight, that is. I may have got on barefoot. And helped the family of three on the way: the dad realized that his boarding pass was still in a gray bucket at security. So I took his luggage and the mother and little boy and I kept going and he took off running. The totally adorable child of the family kept saying “is daddy leaving? Doesn’t he was a hot time anymore?” The mom turned to me and said “Cuba” and then reassured the boy that yes, daddy was coming but that he couldn’t run with the carry-on luggage. So she carried him and one piece of carry-on luggage, I took three pieces of carry-on luggage and clenched my boots under my arm and we made our way to the plane. Dad caught up just as we got to the door, we got into our seats and within two minutes of our arrival they shut the door to boarding gate. The second closest I’ve ever been to missing a flight. Tired, stressed and freezing foot-wise, but I was on my way!