28 JUNE 2003 SATURDAY
we stopped by tim horton’s for breakfast (muffins for both of us plus an iced coffee thing for amanda) before heading out to catch our flight.
the hamilton airport seems to be primarily a freight airport. the passenger terminal is quite small as only westjet flies out of there. i had not flown in over two years (san francisco to pitt on usair), and, as to be expected, security was much tighter. i was careful not to plack anything untoward, but security found all sorts of undesirable things in amanda’s backpack (corkscrew, waterproof match holder, repair kit, etc.). they eventually only confiscated the corkscrew tho.
the terminal itself is like that of a commuter/regional terminal. it was basically a big room with all the planes parked outside, except in this case the planes were all 737s instead of turboprops. the planes and paths to the planes themselves were all marked with cute little icons; ours was an orange grizzly bear (“if you get lost, just keep following the orange bear!”). the others were a blue goose, green moose, and some red thingamabob.
all the westjet employees were a riot. in the terminal, one of the boarding agents said over the pa: “oh, no, someone has fiddled with our flight sign. it says were are going to honolulu. hah, you wish!” i think westjet only flies to canadian cities. they held silly contests while people were waiting in line. one agent said (also over the loadspeaker): “oh, my, gosh, how rude of that man to cut in front of you! let me give you this gift to make you feel better!” i didn’t see what she gave the person tho.
the flight attendents were a riot, too. all the usual preboarding and safety annoucements peppered with random comments (e.g. “please turn off all electronic deviced because we do not want to die”) and some rather irreverent comments and barbs about each other. “and, our pilot, um, i don’t know his name, um, we just always call him the candyman”. in between all the refreshment rounds (canadian airlines are way better than us airlines in service), they cracked jokes over the pa system and had contests and the like. to celebrate leaving ontario, daniel (one of the flight attendents with these cool elvis sideburns; amal and stevie were others), waxed philosophical about the toilets in their airplanes and demonstrated how powerful the suction was by running a rolls of toilet paper the length of the cabin and sucking it down the front lavatory. he was also the one who told the jokes, e.g., “what was tigger looking for in the toilet? he was looking for pooh”. they also had a contest to see who had the most canadian tire money. rebecca in 6a had $3.63 and won a westjet snow/bubble pen. woohoo. amanda and i were sitting in the back by the flight attendents, and daniel would periodically come by to poke about in the overhead cabins. he apparently had a bunch of live lobsters up there from halifax. “yup, they’re still moving.” “hey, pets, aren’t allowed!” “they’re not pets; they’re dinner!” all the other flight attendents kept calling hin “danielle”, and he was none too pleased.
eventually, we got the the calgary airport, picked up out rental car from budget, drove off to banff (maybe an hour and a half away), and checked into the hostel. budget wanted another $35 a day to let amanda drive since she’s still under 25, so i guess i have to drive the whole time. we then tried to eat at tacotime in the cascade plaza, but it had closed down, so we ate at edo’s instead, and i got a basket of fries from the dairy queen. edo’s was out of tofu, so amanda and i just got rice and veggies. after a walk about town, we headed back to the hostel, and hung out at cougar pete’s, their restaurant/cafe/bar and had nachos and beer on the deck. we later collapsed in bed because it doesn’t get dark until after 11pm and we were already 2 hours ahead of local time.
amanda notes:
darren has a big hole in the back of his ithaca festival t-shirt. i just dres a smiley face in it to add to its inherent charm. he is mesmerized by the fire that we are watching on the deck of the banff hostel. we are waiting for nachos and drinking beer in the meantime. oh, yes, we aim to lose weight on this trip.
we spent the afternoon bumming around banff (aka disneyworld). we finally found another hiking book that we wanted, but got sucked into the history section at the bookstore and eventually decided we did not need to be reading about the rape of nanking the week of our wedding.
ack, my handwriting has really gone to shit since i started med school. no wonder karen always needed a verbal interpretation of my notes.
anyway, our first day was a good one; the flight was hilarious, and we only had a small setback when we went to tacotime to eat only to discover that it was walled up (the horror).
we are going to be here for canada day. woohoo! there are many events. maybe we will take some time out from hiking to partake. now we need to figure out what hikes to do.