Friday, January 25
AC8846 dep YYG 1525 arr YHZ 1605

My coworker was on the 9am Air Canada flight to Halifax, connecting to Ottawa. The coworker, whom I will call Pat, since that's his name, called me around noon to let me know that he was still in Halifax. His flight had been cancelled, and the next one was full, so he was now standing by for my connecting flight, which was supposed to be oversold. I decided I had better check to see what was happening to my travel plans. Surprise! my departure out of Charlottetown was delayed to 3:40pm.

At least that meant I had enough time to take care of last minute stuff at home, such as putting the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. Nevertheless, I still managed to forget to take the garbage out. more on that later.

When I got to the airport I saw the flight was delayed again, to 4 pm. This was probably a good thing, since they made me take my boots off at airport security, delaying the line up. I had already gotten to the point where I don't wear a belt when I fly; looks like I'll be wearing sneakers from now on.

We finally departed sometime around 4:15 pm, and got to Halifax at 4:45pm. The flight attendant announced connections and begged passengers to let connecting passengers deplane first, since lots of us were now going to have tight connections. I decided not to hurry since Air Canada would delay the outbound flights enough to get luggage to them anyway.

AC1185 dep YHZ 1715 arr YOW 1802

On the other hand, there wasn't going to enough time for a quick drink in the Maple Leaf Lounge, so I did go to the gate. Pat was still there, still wondering if he was going to get to Ottawa. Luckily he managed to get a seat, or else he would have had the pleasure of departing 7 hours before me and arriving several hours after. I also ran into 6 other people I knew at the gate, only one of whom I was expecting to see. I didn't bother asking the gate agents about rearranging our seating so that we could all sit together.

The flight was fine. I greatly enjoyed the bag of nacho chips and the half cup of ginger ale. I got the flight attendants to hit reset so that we could listen to the audio entertainment rather than watch the news. I've never understood why they don't just keep the music tapes running.

Upon landing, we headed to the luggage claim. For once they announced which carousel our luggage was coming on when we were there, instead of before we could make it down. Too bad we couldn't hear the announcement over the noise.

Since I quit smoking I had nothing to do while waiting for mu luggage, so I went to the Tim Hortons stall, which is now at arrivals rather than departures, and got a coffee (caffeine, nicotine, whatever!) and a muffin for Pat, since he was having the pleasure of sitting around in airports all day on his birthday. I then organized the caravan for the eight of us, since we were almost all going to the same hotel, too.

The friend I had been expecting to run into, whom I will call Hammy even though his name is Greg, was renting a car since he had many errands to run over the weekend. By the time he finished dealing with Budget, our bags started to arrive. Four of us dutifully trooped off to his car, where we got to enjoy a Chrysler Intrepid.

Delta Ottawa Hotel

We arrived at the hotel at the same time as everybody else, so of course everybody discussed their dinner plans while they checked in. I'd requested a Signature Club upgrade, but the Club lounge was closed on the weekend and the clerk gave me a choice of using an upgrade or keeping the room I was assigned. I also noticed that the pool was still not open after the major refit they were doing.

I dumped my things in my room and then met up with Hammy and Rick (oh, yeah: one of the people who flew in with us, and that's his name, etc.), as we were going out to dinner together. However, Hammy first had to go to some computer supply store to exchange hardware so we tagged along. Hammy started taking us to parts of Ottawa I'd never seen before, despite my having visited on a regular basis for 9 years and having lived there for 6 months in 2001. AS things began to look more and more dire I mentioned that I could hear banjos in the background. Nevertheless, we finally found the computer store and had a great time poking around.

Eventually we made it out without having to re-enact Deliverance, and headed across town to Chinatown for dinner. We went to the Yangtze on Somerset St. which is one of my favourite Ottawa Chinese restaurants, but nobody else wanted deep-fried softshell crab with peppersalt, the main reason why the restaurant is one of my favourites. Nevertheless we had some decent if not spectacular food and decided we'd go back to eating at the Chu Shing (across the street) in the future. Oh well, at least the shrimp was fresh. Of course nobody had much cash on them, but we managed to come up with enough cash to give Hammy our share while he put the tab on his credit card.

Hammy asked us if we wanted to hi the Newfoundland Pub, but Rick and I were both tired, so we went back to the hotel where I watched Star Trek reruns for an hour or so and crashed.

Saturday January 26

Went to meetings, ate hotel food (not bad), went shopping, forgot to buy Chinese New Year greeting cards, stored the frozen dim sum in the hotel freezer, went to my room, realized that I had a cold, and was miserable all night.

Sunday January 27

I felt a little more human and headed out in search of cold medication and a good book or two. After taking the cold medication, I felt better and had a bite to eat, then went shopping for an in-drawer knife block that could take a meat cleaver. I then gave up and went back to the hotel, where I read and sniffled until it was time to head to the airport.

I took the airport shuttle (never take it to the Delta as it's one of the last stops, but from the Delta it's quite convenient - except for when they don't show up at all) to the airport, not bothering to correct the driver when he gave wrong information about where to go to check in for flights to where. The line up at Business check-in was not moving, so I used the kiosks. I also ran into another coworker there, whom I will call Dobie because it annoys here. I showed her how to use the kiosks. We then immediately headed upstairs as we were warned that security was slow. It was. Luckily I had packed my boots and was wearing sneakers, but we eventually got through, after letting about 20 people who were going to miss their Toronto flight in ahead of us.

We got through (she had about 20 electronic devices on her) and I took her to the lounge, where I got to chat with my favourite Ottawa AC employee and exchanged gossip and information.

AC616 dep YOW 1740 arr YHZ 2013

As an aside, I'll note that this flight used to leave at 6pm. If they had just moved it a little earlier we would have been able to connect to a flight home, but alas, no, now instead of spending 75 minutes at YHZ we now get to spend 90 minutes there.

I noticed that the flight was leaving in 12 minutes so I ran and grabbed Dobie and we headed to the gate. I had upgraded this leg so I sat in a business class cabin that was 1/3 empty. We were fed a small scoop of tuna salad on asparagus and cucumber, with diced red pepper scattered about. The white wine was something awful, but they were also serving a decent Italian sparkling wine. Once again I had to ask them to turn on the music, and I gave them back the newspaper they gave me that was 8 days old.

When we got to Halifax we went to the lounge and whined about or jobs over pate and cheese and crackers. And a rum toddy for me - strictly medicinal for my cold, you see.

AC8849 dep YHZ 2145 arr YYG 2220

When I had checked in on the kiosks I'd looked to see if this flight was oversold, since ITN was showing only one seat for sale. Alas, they had switched from the Dash 8 100 to the Dash 8 300 so instead I'd grabbed a seat where I could be antisocial. So when we left the lounge and went down to catch the flight I thought about getting our seats changed to sit together for all of 2 seconds before the words "why bother?" went through my mind. Then the flight was delayed to 10pm. Then the agent picked up his microphone and said "For those passengers waiting to board flight 8849, we are in an ov..."

I was up and lined up at the service desk before they finished the first sentence and Dobie was right behind me. The Dash 8 300 was "broken" according to the agents so they were back to a 100. We were asked if we wanted to overnight or be put in a taxi. I wanted to overnight but everybody else wanted to be taxied to Charlottetown. We got our $300 vouchers and then headed downstairs to collect our luggage. Dobie didn't get hers and was eventually told it was still in Ottawa. Meanwhile, the third person ("Scott") who volunteered grabbed the shotgun seat in the taxi. A fourth person who was on standby and was offered a place in the cab eventually changed her mind, so the three of us were off in a taxi to Charlottetown.

Of course, nobody had told us that they were having bad weather throughout Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Generally, only one lane was clear all the way home. On the divided highways, that meant one lane in either direction. On the non-divided highways, it was one lane, period. We convinced the driver to take the exit to the Tim Horton's in Stewiake, which he almost missed. We almost went into the ditch as he cut over hard to make it to the exit. We all went in for coffee; while he was in the washroom I polled the other passengers on whether we would be killed, horribly maimed, or just permanently psychologically scarred by this road trip.

At least one of us had to stay awak the whole trip, because it was clear that our driver had never driven to Charlottetown before and we needed to give constant directions along the lines of "take the exit marked 'Charlottetown'". The driver also mentioned that he had been driving since 4pm that afternoon, and that they had forgotten to pay his fare before we left. I checked his gas gauge; it looked like there was enough to get his land yacht to Charlottetown, so if he had enough change to pay the highway tolls I was happy.

We finally got to Charlottetown around 2:30 am. I went home, noticed that I'd forgotten to take out the garbage, took out the garbage, sprayed Lysol around the apartment, stuck the frozen dim sum in the freezer, took more cold medication, and went to bed to die.

islandcub

Thanks for that.. Hope you are still alive!!

Thanks for your concern! Yes, I'm still alive.

But the worst indignity is: no frequent flyer miles for the cab ride! I think I'll send Aeroplan a little note...

islandcub

"But the worst indignity is: no frequent flyer miles for the cab ride! I think I'll send Aeroplan a little note..."

No, they should have given you the miles, they wouldn't be much, but on principle, especially when you did them a big favor.
I would have opted for the hotel and taken the flight the next day.

Good report and I like the humo(u)r. They need more humor on here, more personality.

I look forward to more.
Have been to the Maritimes once in my life:
Halifax and St. Johns, so it is kind of special to read about the Maritimes on here.

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MD
AA PLT,1 MLN Miles+
Hilton Gold
Sheraton Gold

Funny report to read (though not to live through, I gather). Thanks.

Thnaks very much for the great amusing report, islandcub!

Thanks for the funny trip report.

Excellent job on the vouchers!

Funny! Thanks for writing it