turns out to be less easy than one might think. Well, actually, it’s probably not that hard to get here, but thanks to Northwest Airlines, our trip here was pretty horrendous.
Our first flight was out of Ithaca on Sunday morning at 6 am. This is obviously not the most desirable time in the world to be flying (at least for me), but it meant that we would be getting to the conference sometime in the afternoon. Alas that things did not turn out that way.
Initially our flight was delayed because of “some paperwork” which needed to be sorted out. I’m not sure what paperwork it was, exactly, but it meant that we were close to 45 minutes late in boarding. Once we did get on board, things did not get appreciably better (although I did start to nap, so I was less aware of the problems), because there turned out to be some major problems with the de-icing equipment. The de-icer they were just about to use on our plane broke and they had to use another one. They seemed to use this opportunity to teach someone the basics of how to use one of these machines, which meant that it took a good deal longer than it might otherwise to get the whole thing done. It was close to 8 am before we finally took off.
When we finally made it to Detroit, we had obviously missed our connection to Minneapolis. And the route they were suggesting we take instead would have us go through Houston (logically enough), which I would have been sort of ok with, had it not been for the fact that we had a 39 minute layover there. Somehow I did not feel that Northwest Airlines would be able to transfer our luggage in 39 minutes even if we were able to get from one gate to another. So we managed to talk to someone at one of the phone banks and got them to fly us via a later flight through Minneapolis to Calgary, which would have been ok, except that it seemed we would be getting in to Calgary kind of late. However, we could perhaps have taken a taxi or something (albeit at great expense) to the hotel that night. In the meantime, we had several hours to kill at the Detroit airport, amusing ourselves by watching the little electric train drive back and forth (although we did not in fact actually ride on it) from one end of the terminal to the other. Walking through the underpass with the very funky music and lights, and sitting around waiting. Northwest did graciously give us a $5 breakfast voucher for our delay, of course, which goes a very long way in an airport, needless to say.
Our next flight, the one to Minneapolis, was of course also delayed, although the reason for this delay was a bit unclear. Northwest seems to operate with a minimum of half an hour delay as its general policy. Perhaps so people don’t get too high expectations? And it was more like an hour or two by the time we got to Minneapolis. But this was by no means of great concern to us, since we had a four hour layover there, and so plenty of time. These extensive layovers also meant that we felt reasonably confident that our luggage would make it as well. After all, with four or five hours at each place, how could they not get our luggage transferred to the next plane?
Minneapolis also featured dinner at a rather crunchy and organic type of cafe (which served tempeh cutlet, much to Laura’s amazement). And since our flight was delayed (of course) we had plenty of time there as well. The flight to Calgary featured at least one, possibly more, team of high school hockey teams, complete with their extensive baggage of hockey paraphernalia, all of which had to be unloaded at the far end, of course. It was not a terribly restful flight, although I must admit that I was able to sleep pretty well on all three of our flights. I guess sleeping on airplanes is something I do reasonably well.
However, owing to the rather severe delays in departure from Minneapolis, we did not get to Calgary until around one or two in the morning, rather later than originally planned. And then we discover that our bags failed to make it. So we had to deal with the fun of finding out that our bags had somehow ended up staying in Minneapolis and would be arriving (probably) the next afternoon and decided that, since the shuttles to the hotel were obviously not leaving in the middle of the night, we would just stay at the airport hotel in Calgary that night and then go to Lake Louise the next day. Lo and behold, that actually worked, and we even managed to get our bags before we took the shuttle for the three hour trip to the Chateau Lake Louise, where the conference was being held. We only missed the first morning of talks, which wasn’t too bad, since there were no afternoon sessions for the conference.
The tale of the return journey is longer… and will be posted soon, hopefully.
