I love to travel (and have the depleted bank account to show for it).
I am told that my first travel experience was at about 6 months, when my parents flew my across the country to meet the extended family. While I can’t say I remember that journey… airplanes and me have been very close for many years.
Recently most of my trips are in Canada and US (see earlier note about depleted funds). I did regularly go on a fundraising cruise every December but not sure that is in the cards for this year. Still, I have travelled a lot in North America and have I got stories! And guess what? Going to sharing them.
Hmmm… where to start? Well, seeing as I am about to go on a trip to Florida in a few weeks, I’ll start with a tale of a trip there.
A few years back, post-9/11, I was heading to Orlando – I can’t recall why, but I am certain it was for something related to a charity I do work for (their offices are based there, while I do fundraising for them up here in Canada). Anyway, the Air Canada flight had touched down and myself and all the other passengers were all looking forward to the plane taxiing up to the terminal and letting us off.
Ah, it is good to have dreams, hunh? Okay, it wasn’t that bad…
We are almost there… it seemed like only a few hundred feet… but the plane ground to a halt and we were not moving forward. The captain came on and said that our plane had been asked by the tower to hold for a few minutes for security reasons and that he would let us know when we would be moving again soon.
As he was telling us this another plane came thundering down on the runway next to us and then taxiied over to the terminal.
Now, the thing about Air Canada flights to Orlando is that they are codeshares with United Airlines. We Canadians don’t care much about that but one American on the plane sure as hell did.
He started going on, loudly, about how this would never have happened if we were on a UNITED Airlines plane (codeshare yes, plane was ‘labelled’ Air Canada though). If it had been an American-based plane, he said, we wouldn’t have been held up. He went on about how the U.S. of A. had to be careful about foreign planes, even Canadian ones. He thought it was really unfair that he had thought he was getting on an United plane and now that he was going to be late for his whatever because he was stuck with ‘foreigners.’ His President, he said, wouldn’t stand for this. He was sure that if he knew United was doing this to their American customers he’d put a stop to it. His President was working on keeping terrorists out of the US and the plane companies need to work with him. That way people like him (the passenger) wouldn’t have to be stopped because being on a Canadian plane was a security threat.
Anyway, eventually he captain came on again. He thanked us for our patience and said that the security concerns were now taken care of. And, if we were interested, we could look out the window to understand why we were held up and also to see one of the most famous planes in the world – Air Force One.
And Mr. Spouts-alot immediately shut up. (tee hee)
Yep, George W. was coming into town to meet up with his brother Jeb at some event… and his plane was coming in at the same time as ours. So we got stopped. As would any plane have been (and several others were… when you looked out at Air Force One you could see other planes that had been held where they were suddenly starting to rev up again).
Okay… silly story, I know, but I thought it was amusing.
