A travel miracle

Hello from Vancouver. Yes, we're on the road again. Tom has a grant to do research at the UBC library and Henry and I decided to tag along. So on Saturday we headed to the Ottawa airport for yet another cross-continental flight. Oh, but what a flight this turned out to be. Through a series of events so improbable in these days of airline-induced misery you may doubt the authenticity of my tale, we won the travel lottery. I assure you that what you are about to read is true. It really happened. To us. Us!

The first leg of our trip (Ottawa to Winnipeg) was full. So full, in fact, that the check-in agent put each of us in different rows because there were no adjoining seats available. Interesting. "Hmmm--Which of these unsuspecting people milling around the gate will end up sitting next to Henry while Tom and I are relaxing in another part of the plane," I thought to myself. "I hope he or she likes to colour, and knows to make motorcycle noises when Henry straddles the arm rest, and isn't wearing clothing they care about." But I never got to see the lucky winner because we were paged soon after we got to the gate. The agent wanted to know if we'd be willing to give up our seats on the overcrowded Ottawa-Winnipeg flight and instead take the Ottawa-Vancouver direct flight that was leaving at the same time. We reluctantly agreed to shave 2.5 hours traveling time and a stopover from our trip. And when we found our seats on the new plane, we realized that not only had we been bumped up from a two-leg flight to a direct flight, we'd also been bumped up from coach to Executive Class (I guess the airline figured they owed us a little something extra because they had deprived us of our chance to see the Winnipeg airport, which by all accounts is lovely in the summer months.)

No other way to put it: a travel miracle. Four giant seats all to ourselves. So much leg room that Henry couldn't reach the seat in front of him to kick it repeatedly. Fresh fruit plate. Omelet and sausage breakfast. Bottomless coffee. And warm cookies and ice cream for snack. Sigh. We're ruined for coach forever.

So, great start to our trip. We'll be here for two weeks. I'm looking forward to spending time with old friends and family and seeing my old haunts. Well, I probably won't take Henry to the Ivanhoe, but there's other stuff we can do.