Why Flying Is No Fun
Greetings once again, everyone.
I have a story for you this week, but it’s really not mine. But the person whose story it is — my mom — won’t be sharing it, so I am going to do the deed. She can send me an email to correct anything I get wrong. I’ll tell the tale shortly, but first…
Mom was visiting for the past month or so. I spent a lot of time failing to properly entertain her, but she won’t say that (out loud, anyway). The most exciting place we went was probably the Burnaby Velodrome:
There is no rule that velodromes (aka, indoor, oval, bicycle race tracks) must have inflatable roofing systems, but it seems to happen with some frequency. We noted this odd looking building while out on a walk on the other side of the harbour and had to figure out what it was. At which point mom says “I’ve never been to a velodrome, we should go.” And a few days later there we were.
This particular velodrome also gets used by volleyball players. I guess that makes sense. That big flat area in the middle of the track has to be good for something, right?
And that’s my mom, for those not in the know.
Sadly there were no bicyclists racing or training, and only one volleyball court was even in use for some sort of practice, but the space was interesting, and we can now take “visit velodrome” off our bucket lists.
Another walk in Cate’s Park — where we first saw the velodrome — also revealed this bit of scenery:
I’ve included that photo only to win an argument with my wife. She told me there are no refineries in our area, but there is one. It’s not large — as you can see — but that is definitely a refinery of some sort. So there. Documentary evidence that I was correct about something. Ha!
Also while mom was here, we attended a concert of the West Coast Fiddleheads, a group Anne plays with:
Anne is in the middle back, just behind Rosy, the founder and piano player. Here’s Anne during the show:
Another thing that I am certain my mom was thrilled by while she was here:
That’s the first pass at the pond filter working.
You might recall that I ordered a pump for this filter effort and that it is much bigger than the old one. I thought that meant I had not properly understood the rating (in gallons per hour) of the old pump, but it turns out they are similar, at about 1000 GPH. So while the new pump is substantially larger, I think it is better made than the old one, and not actually oversized for our need.
The pond looks particularly disgusting in those photos because I have stirred it up to let the new pump suck sediment out and run it through the filter, which is the big blue bin. (I won’t go into the contents of the filter as that is a long digression. If someone really wants to know, comment or email me and I can write it up for you.)
In a couple of hours it removed a fair amount of sediment. Sadly, however, it was not nearly enough. We haven’t cleaned the pond at all in our three years here, and I doubt the previous owners did so either. The muck at the bottom is quite thick. So while the filter works, it’s not ideal. I am mulling over possible changes to see if I can make it work better.
OK… the story I promised at the start, about why flying is no fun:
Mom was scheduled on a flight leaving YVR (Vancouver airport) at 1:30pm. As usual, the advice for those traveling internationally is to get to the airport three hours early, to allow plenty of time to get through check-in, security, and customs. (In the case of this flight, US customs is actually located on the Canada end. Passengers go through it before boarding the plane, and arrive at a domestic terminal at their US destination.)
Mom, however, hates waiting in airports, and has one of those cards — Nexus or Global Entry — that should speed you through the various checks at the airport. So we planned to get her to the airport a bit later than is typically advised. Then, Vancouver had its say and traffic was terrible. I think I waved goodbye to her just two hours before her flight was to leave.
I worried a bit, but her instincts were good and she was at the gate well in advance. No problem.
That should have been the end of the story, but no.
At about 1:38 — eight minutes after her flight was supposed to take off — she texted me. Apparently there was a mechanical problem with the plane, and the stated delay was 25 minutes.
At 2pm they had still not boarded and the internal PA system at the gate was not working, so it was hard to find out what was going on.
At 2:45 pm— 75 minutes after the planned departure time — she told me that several people had bailed out on the flight and were trying to make other connections. New departure time was 3pm, which seemed highly unlikely given they had not boarded yet.
3:19pm — Boarding will begin in five minutes.
3:45pm — (135 minutes late) — Almost everyone is on board. Wheels up soon.
4pm — Nope. Some of the people who rebooked on other flights decided to come back to this one, but their seats had been given to people on standby. She described it as a kerfuffle. And a few minutes later she said they were waiting on bags to be removed, but the crew “runs out of time” at 4:30.
4:45pm — Back in the terminal, I think. Mom says that she’s trying to get a new ticket home from somewhere, and rumour says her original flight is now scheduled to depart at 9:15.
5:10pm — She’s talked to a United agent over video. A new crew is on the way to fly the plane, but they don’t arrive until 8:50. How they are going to land at 8:50 and take off again at 9:15 is unclear. The agent suggests 9:40 is probably closer to the truth. I confirm the 9:15 time via google, though.
5:35pm — the flight is cancelled. She’s rebooked on a flight leaving at 11:20pm.
At this point I seriously considered going to get her, but the timing was awful. I was at home, and the commute to the airport would have been close to an hour. She’d have had to get out and eventually go back through security again, and we had no clue how to deal with the bag she had checked onto the flight. Add in the time needed to go somewhere — maybe for dinner — and then back to the airport and there was simply no way to do anything useful or fun.
Mom went and found airport food for dinner, and then back to the gate to wait another two and a half hours before boarding her flight home.
She texted me at 11:17 to say she was on board and there were no glitches so far, and later that she had landed at 3:21am back in the US.
Had we known anything at all about how that trip was going to go, we could have spent almost another full day with her. Had the airline had better procedures, they might have caught the mechanical issue earlier and avoided the delay. Or they could have told those who left the flight they were not allowed back on it. And they could have better planned for the limitations of when flight crews are allowed to work. So many ways things could have gone better.
I don’t have a lot of awful experiences while flying, but I generally hate the process. Cramming 300 people into a tiny metal tube seems like a bad idea for starters, and it only gets worse from there.
If I could, I’d prefer to fly like this guy:
So that’s my mom’s story. She had to rearrange everything she’d planned for the next day because of the mess, and she spent 12 full hours waiting in that airport. Ugh.
May your own travel go better than that! See you next week.