How long can a day last? Twenty four hours? That is a good starting place, but it assumes you are stationary on the surface of the planet as it rotates on its axis. Put yourself in an airplane and fly east and the days get remarkably shorter, depending on how fast you fly. Going to Europe, we left Vancouver, BC at 9:10 am Sunday morning, flew for 5 hours and arrived in Montreal at 4:52 pm. Eight hours elapsed on the clock, yet it only took 5 hours to happen. We lost 3 hours. We then left Montreal at 6:55 pm and arrived in Rome at 8:50 am the next day. 13 hours and 55 minutes elapsed on the clock, yet the flight was only 7 hours and 55 minutes. Again, we lost time, 6 hours. Our day did not last 24 hours. We landed in Rome 23 hours after taking off from Vancouver BC, if you consider the clock on the wall, yet we only experienced about 14 hours of it. Nine hours disappeared. Coming home, traveling west, we gained back our lost time, but with the help of Air Canada’s flight delays, we turned a 14 hour journey into a whole lot more.
We rose from our comfy room near the Vatican before 6:00 am, showered, packed and slipped out before 7:00 am. We rode the Metro from Ottaviano stop to Termini train station, rode a half a dozen escalators up to ground level and walked to our waiting TAM shuttle bus, scheduled to leave for the airport at 8:00 am. We arrived about 20 minutes early, so I popped into a bakery and grabbed a couple of muffins while Sally kept an eye on our stuff on the bus. No eating is allowed on the bus, so we took turns eating on the sidewalk outside.
Surprisingly, there was almost no traffic between 8:00 am and 9:00 am as we rode out to the airport. Once deposited at terminal 3, we walked upstairs to find the Air Canada section of the departures area to check Sally’s bag. What we found was a very busy airport with lines stretching back and forth from the various flight vendors. We found Air Canada. It’s lines were shorter, and by asking a few question we found ourselves in a line only 2 people deep to check her bag.
The agent was a fun woman about 30 years old, yet she had dour news. Our flight, scheduled to leave at 11:30 am, had been delayed to 1:30pm. We laughed it off and tried to put her at ease. She gave us free meal coupons for the “Bistrot” restaurant upstairs and told us we could cash them in once our 11:30 flight time had passed.
We wandered upstairs, avoiding going through security just yet, and sat in some chairs to while away a few hours. The people seated behind us struck up a conversation. They were from Victoria, BC. They lead bike tours in central Italy and own a home in the Apennines. We talked bikes and travel for a bit, then decided to go through security and find a place to hang out while waiting for time to pass. Our gate was not posted yet, so we didn’t have a destination.
We had purchased a metal sign, a Vespa ad with a buxom girl seated on the scooter, for John Sanford. It did not fit in our suitcase or pack, so we couldn’t check it, but we wondered if security would allow us to carry it on. Being metal, would it be considered a weapon? Sally decided she would carry it through security. Maybe playing the woman card might help it get through. I had my own contraband to get past the guards as well, a half full 8 oz jar of peanut butter. I was hoping to eat it with apples on the flight, but if they took it, no big deal. I also had a bottle of water in my pack. Those are usually opened and dumped out.
Sally went through first, her metal knee and back setting off the metal detector. As the lady patted her down and scanned her metal parts, I followed. We both looked over at the man monitoring the x-ray machine. He was distracted by a fellow worker, discussing something in Italian and never looked at the monitor as Sally’s deadly metal sign and my water and peanut butter slid through the scanner. We collected our contraband and continued toward the gates.
Was it our age, race and demeanor that relaxed the guard and caused him not to scrutinize our bags, or is he often easily distracted. Granted, it is a tedious job to stare at bags of people’s personal possessions for hours at a time, but it made us wonder how tight the security at the airport was. If we got through with metal signs, peanut butter and water, what else was getting through this security net?
We sat down in some chairs in the concourse. Netflix in Italy has the Modern Family series, so I watched an episode while Sally got up to explore and shop a bit. She returned to say she found a couch in a restaurant upstairs, the same restaurant our vouchers were good at. We hustled up to find the couch still open and quickly claimed it. Fortunately, a screen showing flight times and gates was easily visible from our position. We could lounge and nap while keeping an eye on our flight, which now was listed as boarding at 3:05 pm, over four hours late. Still, no gate was listed, so we blogged, watched videos, ate our free pizza and sandwiches and slept.
About 2:30 pm, the board finally listed a gate. We ordered sandwiches to go, then headed for the gate, where we waited another 45 minutes before boarding. The airline flight attendants were particularly kind and somewhat apologetic about the delay. We had a particularly fun attendant who snuck Sally a small bottle of Irish Creme for her ice cream and shared jokes with us, his eyes full of laughter and mischief. We slept, read, wrote, watched movies and generally made the time pass. It is a long way from Rome to Montreal, even in a plane going 600 mph.
We landed in Montreal at about 6:15 pm. Our connecting flight to Vancouver was scheduled to leave at about 7:25 pm. We thought if we hustled, we might make it through customs and be able to get on that flight. It would be tight, but we might make it. As we emerged from the jet way into the terminal, we found an Air Canada agent with our connecting flight tickets all ready for us on a table. She gave us ours. The first thing I noticed was the flight was scheduled to leave at 11:00 pm. What?!?!? I asked the agent if we could just try for our 7:25 pm flight. She examined both tickets and pointed out we were talking about the same flight. Our 7:25 pm flight had been delayed unti 11:00 pm. Wow!! A day of delays. She handed us two €10 food coupons. We passed through customs and entered the airport. Again, no gate was listed, so we found a row of unoccupied benches, pulled the sleeping bags from my pack, set an alarm on my phone for 10:00 pm and tried to sleep a bit. We may have dozed off, but certainly we achieved no REM sleep.
At 10:00 pm we found a restaurant. Sally got a pasta salad to go. I held out for a second restaurant and ordered a hamburger and fries. We wandered to our gate. There sat a plane, but we were not boarding. We found another row of blank chairs and laid down again. Finally, about 1:30 am they told us they were ready to board. Only about 6-7 hours late. The airport was all but closed down at this time. We were the last plane to leave, about 2 hours after all other planes had departed. I think we were finally airborne about 2:15 am.
The 5 hour flight put us on the ground in Vancouver BC about 4:15 am. The flight attendant announced that the pilot had ordered up some food vouchers for us and would distribute them as we exited the plane. We were handed a voucher, but as we glanced at it, we saw it was for a discount on the next flight, if applied within 12 months to a full priced fare. hmmmm . . .. Where is our food voucher? We asked, and they booted up a computer and printed us two $10 vouchers. I guess we were the only two on the plane that asked for them.
We collected Sally’s bag, then wandered back upstairs to a Tim Horton’s that must stay open all night in this totally shut down and vacant 4:30 am airport. We spent the entire $20, buying combinations of soup, muffins, bagels and pastries to come as close to $20 without exceeding it. Finished with our meal at 5:00 am, we found another row of seats and stretched out to sleep until about 6:00 pm when Steve would pick us up.
Kris Carpenter, formally Kris Lyon and a student of mine back in the 80’s lives in Ferndale, WA. Our van had been parked at her place for the duration of our trip, and she had kindly insisted that she would pick us up at the airport. Of course, that was when we thought we would be landing in Vancouver at 7:30 pm Thursday night. As the delays kept mounting and the pickup time turned into midnight, then 2 am and finally 4:15 am, we arranged for them to sleep the night through, then pick us up at 6:00 am. They had to rise early to help get their son off to his second day of a new job, so the early hour was not too much of a hardship.
We had a little confusion about where arrivals are picked up, being told there were two locations, domestic and international. But a glance at Google Maps showed only one road in and out, so Steve would drive by both and easily find us, which he did.
We enjoyed a long conversation with Steve, a wonderful and kind man, on our ride to Ferndale. The border crossing was very slow. They only had two gates open, and today is the first day of Trump’s stupid Muslim ban. It took us an hour. We arrived at Steve and Kris’ home, had a wonderful conversation, then crawled beneath the covers at 11:30 am and slept to 2:30 pm, the beginning or our conversion back to this time zone.
We woke at 6:00 am Rome time, Thursday. We finally slept at 11:30 am PCT Friday morning, which is 8:30 pm Friday Rome time. We were in transit, awake, for 38 and a half hours, with a few cat naps on benches. Talk about a time warp. 38 hours to do a 12 hour flight. Where does the time go?
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