and 28 hours later...

Last weekend was Rob's and my annual get-away.

Like last year, we left a lovely Edmonton weekend in exchange for cold/wet despite forecasts to the opposite. We seem to be cursed that way.

This year had an added twist to the curse...

As you may imagine, there is a lot of preparation that goes into planning a vacation when you have oodles of animals and a farm. This year it was great as Kyla was able to farm sit, and Laureen was able to cover the one morning Kyla had to go to her "real" job. Still, we needed to make sure all contingencies were covered, everything was ready to make things easy here, and the animals were considered.

This meant an early morning getting the barns done, organizing the house and pets, and then dropping off the doggies and Rob's parents. It all went well, and we arrived at the airport in plenty of time, which was good as the flight was listed as "on time". As the time to board approached though, they kept pushing the flight back further and further and further... (Rob and I had sat fairly far from the departure date as they had loud music near the gate that we didn't enjoy so we missed out in the free food vouchers they handed out). Finally 2.5 hours or so later, they let us board.

We sat down in our cramped little plane seat, and listened to the story from the guy beside us who told us this was day two for him to try to get to Comox due to the fog. The day before they had taken off, got to Comox, and come back. Surely they would not do that again?

Meanwhile in the seat behind Rob, was an obnoxious man who had spent the extra weight in the airport bar and divided his time between talking to the grade 3 child in his row, swearing with his buddies, and trying to convince the girl in the row across to come home with him. It was lovely.

But, we got to Comox turbulence free...and then spend 10 minutes doing circles. When you get motion sickness easily, this is not fun. Even less fun when the circles ended with the announcement that they couldn't land, so back to Edmonton we go! WTF?!? I get that if they can't land, they can't land, what I don't get is why we even took off in the first place!

So back to Edmonton. Then to get our bags. Then to stand in the slowest moving line ever to sort out what we would do instead. And by slow, I mean 2 and a half hours. Why? Because the customer service people couldn't just rebook us, they had to call in to the same booking line we could have called! (Rob tried to call in while we were in line, but got forgotten once and lost the call once, and didn't get called back through their call back system).

Eventually we were booked for 8 am to Victoria instead of Comox as it sounded like it was more likely the fog was going to clear from Victoria than Comox. We got a free hotel for the night and a taxi ride, as well as a dinner voucher...but as it was 11pm by the time we actually GOT to the hotel, it wasn't really possible to use the voucher. And of course the hotel was beside the train tracks...

Back at the airport for 6:30 am...flight shows as on time...until we go to get our boarding pass and find out it is cancelled! Fortunately there was a later morning flight that actually did manage to get us to BC. As Rob pointed out, it would have taken less time to just drive there!

Once we got there though, the smell of the ocean and the forest made the trip worth it. I do enjoy the air there. And the lack of garbage blown everywhere. Rob had rebooked us a hotel in Parksville, on the ocean after having to cancel our original plans. It was a decent drive and ferry ride: lovely scenery even with the fog. When we pulled up though, the hotel sign was right in front of an old style two story motel, that looked a little frightening and not all that "ocean front", but fortunately the sign was just placed awkwardly, and the hotel we actually stayed in was lovely and right on the ocean, and we had a nice room at the end overlooking the water at a very good rate.

Having missed an entire day of our vacation really cut short our plans, but we did manage to tour some Marinas, Rob took me on a Catamaran (as I think he wants us to vacation on one some day), and we made it up to Comox as I wanted to see how much it had changed since I was last there. We also ate some great sea food!

Of course the flight back was uneventful...we couldn't be stranded  in Victoria just Edmonton. May have to make up that lost time with another trip later this year!

Karen