My day began far too early. The previous night had been a late one due to a combination of a great Toronto Symphony Orchestra performance (go movie music) and then the packing and re-packing that 2 1/2 weeks away seems to trigger in me. I was up by 5:30 and out the door an hour later – the prospect of missing my 9:10 flight was far more terrifying than that of waiting around in an airport lounge. The waiting around also wouldn’t be so bad as this was Porter airlines, out of Toronto City Centre Airport, and by all accounts their lounge is wonderful.
So onto the streetcar I went, dragging my luggage for the trip across town on the 506 and then a trip south on the 511. The ferry terminal for Porter at the base of Bathhurst is really quite nice – in fact considering how often the ferry comes, it shocked me that the lounge where you wait for it is better than most airport’s gate lounges in comfort and especially in view – large windows offered a commanding view of the channel and the airport itself. The ferry ride was short and efficient, and as it arrived I braced myself for the endless lines, waiting and human-cattle-herding that seems to be the norm at airports.
Boy was I surprised.
All the staff were fantastically polite, and within about 20 minutes of my arrival on the ferry I was checked in, through security and eating complimentary shortbread cookies and drinking complimentary diet coke in the Porter lounge – which, by the way, also featured not only free wifi but about 12 iMacs for the use of waiting passengers.
Porter Lounge at TCCA
Basing my expectations once again on past expereince with airlines, once my flight was called and I boarded, I expected to wait on the plane for some unreasonable amount of time while the crew ignore you and the cabin gets hotter and hotter – and the seatbelt sign stays on of course. Again Porter surprises me by having me in the air within 20 minutes of the beginning of boarding – *on time*. The only complaint I could have about the flight was that it was too short – fifty minutes passed quickly with the staff distributing a snack box containing a shortcake, fruit salad AND a granola bar accompanied by orange juice in a real glass with Porter etched elegantly in its side.
Landing in Chicago was routine. Midway is a nice little airport and I immedately was able to find the Southwest counter, check my luggage and move on to the gate. Imagine my alarm as the time of my flights departure came and went yet the board still showed the flight as on-time. Even worse none of the other passengers seemed alarmed. I was almost an hour past the time of my flight when I finally realized that I had switched time zones and I had failed to catch up. Boarding proceeded fairly normally though Southwest flights don’t have assigned seats, instead according to your ticket ‘class’ you are assigned a group and you can pick from whats availiable once you get on the plane. It was only an hour and a half flight, so I grabbed the first aisle seat I could get in the middle of the plan, instead of fighting over the popular window seats.
Here is where the trouble starts. We taxi out onto the runway after a fair bit of delay (2o minutes maybe). As we are getting ready to fly – the skys crack open and it POURS. I’m not talking just rain here – this was torrential downpour and winds that made the plan lurch side to side on the tarmac – according to the pilot the wind gusts were 60 miles per hour, which for me is 96 km/h!! Needless to say we weren’t going anywhere – so we were pulled off to the side of the runway and the waiting began – and hour and a half of waiting actually – in a plane that didn’t seem to have air conditioning. The flight staff really were friendly though – distributing ice water and asking the captain to let people use the washroom despite the continuing seatbelt sign.
We finally took off and arrived in Minneapolis – at 3:50pm. Now my shuttle to St. Cloud State University left at 4pm from the Ground Transportation Annex- the way I saw it, the southwest delay meant that I would miss that shuttle and have to wait until the 6pm shuttle – which would mean I wouldn’t get to SCSU until 8pm. I claimed my bags and looked at my cellphone – 4:10pm – I had been right – too much time has passed. I called Executive Express and asked them what my options were – to my delight they told me that I wasn’t at the main terminal and thus the shuttle wouldn’t even be to me for another couple minutes – to my great relief, with a little quick walking, I made the shuttle.
I sat next to a very friendly man (Steve maybe?) from Alaska who was travelling around with his wife, including a trip back to their hometown east of St. Cloud, MN. He was very excited to show me the GPS unit they had been using on their travels, which had me pulling out my tablet and showing them what streets and trips and a pen interface can do. He was in the middle of telling me all about his retirement job of working at a museum in Valdez Alaska when he said “i’ve got some reading material for you.” He handed me a small pamphlet and said “maybe you’re already there, but you should read this.” The pamphlet was titled “Steps to Peace with God” and was produced by the Billy Graham Evangelical Association. It told me that we were all sinners and that only through Jesus Christ and admitting our sins could we ever have peace. I had arrived in the midwest.
I arrived at SCSU and registered. The only thing surprising about this process was the revelation that the SCSU campus is a completely dry one, no alcohol is allowed on campus at any time – all drinking had to be done at local bars. I was shown to my room in Lawrence Hall, which is not the building where most of the resnet people will be located, but it had air conditioning and for the small premium it demanded control over temperature was worth it. I unlocked my room door and was greeted with a strange sight – a loft bed on the left hand side of the room about 6 feet of the ground with nothing under it. On the right side, even more strange was a loft bed with the bed at about 4 feet. I ended up choosing the shorter bed, dropped my stuff off and headed out to a restraunt called Mexican Village with a few people I had met at last years resnet and who has also arrived early. I had a dish called the chicken fundito, which I think, is a word that exists neither in Spanish or English. It tasted great – think pulled chicken in a deep fried tortilla, swimming in cheese and jalepeno sour cream with a heaping helping of refried beans and a pitcher of margarita on the side. The food wasn’t expensive, tax and tip and margarita all in only set me back about $20 but little did I know – the artery clogging experience of the (admittedly delicious) fundito would return the next day. I returned to my room, used a chair to climb into my bed and fell asleep.
Lawrence Hall, my home during ResNet 2009
Mexican Village - home of the Chicken Fundito
