Flying From A Small City

Well, what an adventure yesterday, trying to get back to Calgary!

I asked my cousin to drop me off at 9:00 AM, a good 90 minutes before my flight. Which should have been perfect. As it happened, I barely made my connection...

It started with the automated checkin not offering a baggage tag option, which forced me into two blurry lines of travellers that clearly appeared to have been frozen in time long before I arrived. That was the result of just two workers trying to move passengers onto two full (oversold, actually) flights, complicated further by a broken conveyor belt for the luggage. Nothing against unions, except in situations like this where they are prevented from thinking outside the box to help out a problem that was forcing luggage to get stacked like crows on a country telephone pole...

By the time a third nonchalant employee sauntered up to check in passengers, the two lines had further blurred into a wall of first-come, first serve - the best part was a lady with about 80 pieces of luggage and a brood of moaning children that walked around all of us long growing cobwebs in the queue(s), right to the front of the line(s), and discovered that the airline did NOT have her reservation. Which brought a glacial pace to an even slower procession...

By this time, there were less than 7 minutes to my flight boarding. However, Sleepy beckoned me forward, and I was finally checked in, although I watched nervously as my luggage was stacked on top of a coffeemaker in the airport restaurant across the aisle from the baggage drop counter...

Hastening over to security, I discovered that even though I carry expedited access through that delay tactic at airports, once past the array of guards chatting about the weather, I was funnelled into the same blob of traffic that had been at the counter, rather than another expedited lane for the ritual of emptying my pockets to walk though a detector. As the time ticked by, and my boarding time was about 3 minutes passed, I shook my head, looking up to see the scanner employee notice my displeasure. This prompted my choice for a more "personal" inspection - and even more of a delay.

Eventually, I got through the tiniest airport in the world, in just under an hour. My flight left 15 minutes late, and we were off!

The story doesn't end there, but I'm choosing to ignore the delay when we landed, and had to stay out on the tarmac until our gate was cleared. The important thing is I'm home, and maybe next time I'll see if someone has a spare bazooka they can point towards Alberta...

Later!!