Air Canada, Our Home and Native Land...
Greetings from HELSINKI!

Uh...I mean Toronto.

I should be at Ropecon by now. Instead, Judith and I were lucky to find an open Tim Horton's next to the Hilton Airport Hotel, Toronto, midnight last night...the first food we'd had in 12 hours.

The lead-up to this trip had me operating on several days of four- or three-hour-a-night's sleep in a row, as extra work got thrown at me at the last moment.

Fortunately, the work I did during the semiconscious awake hours I had went well. In the last couple of days, I finished:

* Two Dr. Blink backup stories for Dork Tower 29 (five pages of new Blink! Woo!)
* A SnapDragons backup for DT 29 that I'm pleased with.
* A two-page Dork Tower for Dragon Magazine. I think I've been doing some really special cartoons for them, recently. (Anybody see the Foodie Dork Tower in the latest issue?)
* The second Redshirts comic strip for Amazing Stories
* Four Dutch Munchkin cards for the Holland version of the game.
* Five Chez Geek cards for the German version of THAT game.
* A Dork Tower for tomorrow's Pyramid that I'm pretty chuffed with.
* A whole buncha Munchkin Bites cards
* And much, much more...

I'd been getting to sleep at 1 am or later the last few days, waking up around 5 am. So by Wednesday morning, when we left for the airport at 10 am, I was exhausted, but exuberant. Doing good work -- work I'm personally happy with -- is very, very important to me.

Then we ran into Tropical Storm Air Canada.

I was a little trepidatious about a trip that involved so many changes and layovers: Madison to Chicago; Chicago to Montreal; Montreal to London; London to Helsinki. Would our baggage EVER get there, for example?

Well, I made sure that we had a four-hour layover in London, in case there was a problem or two along the way.

Trouble is, there was a problem or three. Or four.

The Air Canada Flight We Were SUPPOSED to take from Chicago to Montreal at 3:45 pm was cancelled. Just cancelled. No explanation.

But we COULD get on a 4 pm flight to Toronto, which could then get us to London a half-hour later, but still with time to spare.

So at 3:45 we boarded the plane. Despite the fact that -- through the terminal windows -- EVERYbody could see three mechanics and the pilot staring at the front wheel, as if they had just hit a possum.

At 4:30, we were told there were mechanical problems that could not be overcome, and we had to disembark. But "new equipment" would be brought "in 15 minutes" for us. And suddenly, our two-hour layover in Toronto became an hour-layover in Toronto, meaning that IF this new plane got off when scheduled (5 pm), we could JUST make the connecting London flight.

To be on the safe side, the chap at the Air Canada desk also booked us on a later flight to London out of Toronto, so we had seats waiting for us on the 8 pm flight AND the 10 pm flight.

"Can't you just get us on a flight from one of your partners, to get us there quicker?" I pleaded.

"You'll have plenty of time," he smiled. "The new plane will be here in 15 minutes."

Fifteen minutes, by the way, seems to be the basic unit of measurement for time at Air Canada. Maybe it's a metric thing.

Half an hour later ("two fifteen minutes," in metric units), the Airbus 319 arrived. So we boarded at 5:15 (45 minutes to connect in Toronto now), and waited.

Which is when time stood still.

Unfortunately, the clocks didn't.

An hour (four metric 15 minute units) later, we finally pulled away from the gate, traveled roughly 200 meters, and then stopped. The pilot said, there was a "mechanical fault that was being looked at." If it was serious, we could be sitting on the tarmac for an hour. If not, "we should be in the air in fifteen minutes."

Fifteen minutes later, we were told the problem was fixed. But they were "just waiting for some paperwork to be filled out."

And this is when the thunderstorms hit. "We're trying to figure out a course around them," says the pilot. "This should only take 15 minutes or so."

Fifteen minutes later, no flight path could, apparently, be found.

So we taxied to a "holding area," on the promise of free cocktails and all the nifty in-flight Air Canada snack mix we could eat.

It was now 8 pm Eastern Standard: the time that our flight to London was taking off from Toronto. But we could STILL make the second flight, IF...

...we had been left with more than a half-hour too change planes, go through customs, change terminals, take a shuttle bus, get new boarding passes, and run to the gate.

Unfortunately, we hadn't

"The last plane to London left at 10," said the woman behind the booth at Toronto's International Terminal, whe we finally dragged our ssorry selves there. "Go over to ticket counter for re-ticketing tomorrow."

Standing in a long line late at night in an empty International air terminal is nobody's idea of fun. So after a few minutes, Judith and I started taking turns alternately waiting in line and wandering the empty, cavernous building.

It was only on my second walkabout, at 10:30, that I glanced at a Status Board to see that the flight to London, Heathrow was listed as "10:30 pm - On Time."

I strolled purposefully back to the woman behind the counter.

"At 10:10, you told me that the flight had left," I said, trying to be calm and reasonable, yet leaving no doubt that I was as peeved as a pack of rabid French weasels that were travelling internationally.

"Well, you never would have made it," came the non-answer answer. "You only had 15 minutes."

Our luggage, apparently, was swifter than humans could have possibly been, and DID make the flight. It is now in London, and Judith and I are in Toronto. We can't hook up with any friends, since we have to remain here until we get the last leg of our rescheduled trip figured out. We were given $7 vouchers for breakfast at a hotel where the buffet runs $15. We also have $10 lunch vouchers. My guess is burgers start at $20.

We're in clothes we've been wearing for 24 hours, and which need to suffice for the next 18, at least. Right now, we're back off to the airport, to try to figure at what time Air Canada will get us to Helsinki...and what we can extract from them in the meantime.

I don't think it will take me long to come up with some ideas.

Give me 15 minutes.