Nip ‘n’ Tuck!

 Weeeelll, we made it but it wasn’t easy. Hahaha…..

We were proud of ourselves for getting to bed early, lights out at 9pm, the night before we left. My husband opted to sleep in the quietness of the basement to avoid the usual Friday night noise coming from the parking lot. He had a lovely six hour sleep. I started off the same way, instantly falling into a deep sleep. Then just after 11pm an overly excited friend texted his greetings to us for a happy trip. Of course this would happen the one night I forgot to shut off my mobile phone, haha. So after my initial two hours of sleep, that was it for me. At least I had no trouble getting up at 3am to get dressed and grab some milk and yogurt before the taxi arrived at 3:30am. 

We straggled off to the airport and spent the hour wait to board by eating the small breakfasts we’d forced into our carry on bags. The flight was so full it took over half an hour to complete boarding. The on time flight was all ready to go ten minutes before take off time, the pilot introduced himself to us and we waited for take off….and we waited….and we waited….and we waited….and waited…..and waited. For nearly 50 minutes we waited, the flight stewards becoming more frustrated and angry as the minutes ticked past, at one point using very angry hand signals between themselves to communicate their disgust with the delay. 

So why was there such a long delay, you ask? I will tell you why! There was such a long delay because for that completely filled flight because there was exactly ONE baggage handler responsible for loading all that baggage into the under carriage of the plane. ONE! OOOOONNNNNEEEEE!!! Baggage! Handler!

I don’t know why that was the case, but as we sat in the plane watching the minutes passing, we realized eventually that there was no way we were going to make our connecting flight. Drat! We were going to have to find the Air Canada Desk after clearing US security and customs in Toronto and try our best to get onto a later flight into La Guardia….kind of a “good luck sister” situation. Sigh….oh well, that’s air travel life these days, but still I prayed for some kind of near miracle to get us to our original connecting flight. Aaaaaaaand, we got it!

Despite the major delay and the short turn around time we had to start with, we landed exactly 15 minutes late instead of 50 minutes late! The older gentleman sitting beside me was turning white as we entered the final phase of our descent into Toronto. I thought he was ill, but when the plane came to a stop on the runway, the dear man explained his former position with the airline and why he’d experienced a white knuckle landing: “Did you realize how fast this plane was still travelling when we got to the edge of the runway apron? Did you realize the pilot got permission to miss the entire taxiing process and hit the final stretch of runway at top speed, and bring our plane to a halt right at the end of the runway, only feet from going off that end? Did you realize that is why we came to a dead, neck jolting stop and then turned sharply back into our deplaning cubicle at the terminal??” Hmmmm….no,I had not realized any of those things! Bless our dear pilots for all their skills in fast flying and not getting us all killed! 

We were seated immediately behind the posh class so were off the plane on record time, completely ignoring members of a famous band who were exiting posh class just ahead of us, as we realized there might still be a faint hope of reaching our connecting flight in time. Of course it was miles to the U.S. portion of the terminal, we thought we had to take the elevator up to the next floor where all the international flights were departing from, missing the fact that there was an escalator tucked around the side of the elevator, therefore panicking when the elevator doors remained firmly closed at the floor we wanted, and before it deposited us back to the same floor we started from, wasting more valuable time! We finally found the escalator, then raced…and I use that term loosely for two folk in their 70’s, one limping along with a cane and the other hobbled by having to carry both extremely full, heavy carry on bags all by himself. 

It was another long journey to U. S. aviation security, but fortunately for us there were few people going through, so we were done there in two minutes despite my leg hardware setting off all the bells and whistles during my security scan and us losing more time while I had a secondary scan. Thankfully the scan revealed the hardware to be the issue and away we went again, covering a lot more territory to get the Customs. Here is where taking time to download the Customs app on my husband’s phone paid off. We had already answered the Customs declaration online and submitted as much as was allowed prior to arriving at the Toronto airport. We had to open the app again there to finish the next steps. Those included answering one more online question and taking a selfie of each of us on my husband’s phone, then submitting them. That is how we filled the time when we were in the elevator going up and down on our way to airport security! hahaha 

When we got to U.S. Customs and Immigration the line up was so short that we waited less than a minute before being beckoned by an agent. He took our passports, plugged them into his system, asked us one question, took another photo of each of us, told jokes, thanked us for using the app questionnaire and we were on our way for another long dash to our departure gate to NYC. We were still fairly certain we had missed the flight, but NO. When we arrived at the gate boarding was just coming to an end and we were able to get on the plane!! Thank you God and our prayer warriors. We made it! How grateful we are! 

When we arrived at La Guardia, after a delightful hour in flight playing peek-a-boo and winky eye with one year old Ben in the row of seats ahead of us, we began racing once again, as was becoming our habit, through the terminal…go up, go way up, go back down, go way back down…to the taxi access area. Just as we were about to go through the “Exit! No Re-entry” doors to the taxis, my husband ground to a halt. He reminded me how long it had been since we had eaten and how long it would likely be before having dinner with our kids. Wisely we took a short backtrack to a Brooklyn Diner outlet for a quick and tasty burger where the idea is to use the mobile phone to access the menu, order and immediately pay online. Fortunately our server, hired for her efficiency and thick Brooklyn accent, was able to help us, her “dear sweet people”, when…..as you will no doubt be SHOCKED to know….neither of our mobile phones worked as required, hahahaha….this latest technical glitch was immediately followed by my U.S. credit card being declined when we tried to pay our taxi driver upon our arrival at our accommodation and the discovery that we would have to “reprogramme” both my husband’s lap top and my iPad in order to get internet access at the hotel….but those are stories for another post, along with the happiness of seeing our kids for the first time in over a year!