Coffee And Clean Bathrooms

In the “Good old days” you would show up at the airport about a half hour before your flight was scheduled to take off, buy a coffee and a magazine, maybe some smokes for the flight and saunter over to the gate and walk onto the plane. Not any more!

Now, you are told to be at the airport at least an hour and a half before your flight, two to two and a half if it is an international flight. You can do a web check in from home over the computer up to twenty four hours before your flight. You will have booked your seats when you bought your ticket; that is unless you don’t want to sit with the person you are travelling with. When you get to the airport you go to a machine to get a boarding pass and something new to me the last time I was there, you print off your own baggage tags! What the hell!

The only thing that they do now, is to smile and tell you that you are in the wrong line. Oh, and put your bags on the conveyor belt, unless you are travelling out of the country and then you put your own bags on the belt.

Don’t get a coffee yet, you still have to go through security. This is where you have to empty your pockets, take off your belt and shoes and the go through a metal detector. Kind of like what happens when you are arrested. I guess they don’t want you to hang yourself before you get to your gate. They x-ray your bag and confiscate your tweezers because with those you could over power everyone in a plane. I can just imagine what would happen if I went into a bank and demanded all of the money because I was armed with a pair of tweezers.

Now you can get a coffee! Oh, and thank God that you don’t smoke anymore, because if you did you would have to go back through security and out of the airport to have a cigarette. I don’t really have a problem with that. I guess the security doesn’t bother me that much either, it is much more desirable than the plane blowing up somewhere over Saskatchewan.

So you are through security and now have about an hour and a half to kill, assuming there is no delay in the flight. The delay could be caused by bad weather (anywhere), mechanical problems (they never tell you what they might be) or some dick that is wandering about the airport and doesn’t know his plane is about to board. First, I usually read the papers that are left on the seats in the waiting area. Of course only the want ads and obits, the business section and the flyers are there. Not the good flyers either! Okay, that’s three minutes taken care of.

Go for a coffee? Screw that, there are thirty three people in line! Check out both souvenir stores, and make a mental note to buy a good magazine in the days leading up to the trip. Why are these stores so shitty? There isn’t anything that I want in them except for the chocolate bar that is double the normal price. Make a mental note to buy chocolate bars in the days leading up to the trip. I guess I will go to the bathroom. Perfect, this one is being cleaned! I walk all over the place looking for another washroom and don’t find one, but when I get back I guess they finished cleaning this bathroom. I look at the floor strewn with paper towels, water splashed on the counters and the floors (I hope it is water) and pieces of gum in all of the urinals. I thought they just cleaned this bathroom? Well, that killed another fifteen minutes.

Time for me to get in line for a coffee. Just as I figured, if I waited long enough I wouldn’t be 34^th in line. Forty two is a good number. How can you stand in line for ten minutes and not only not know what you want, but you don’t have your money ready? Not just one person, but everyone! Finally, hmmmmmm...what do I want? Where did I put my money? That killed twenty minutes.

I take a sip of coffee only to discover it is liquid fire! I find Louise and ask her if I still have an upper lip. She just shakes her head and goes back to her book. I guess I should read my book, but I was saving it for the flight. Oh well! I dig to the bottom of the carry on and find the book just as they call for us to board. Good, now I can read it on the plane.

God, I have to go to the bathroom again. How can they be cleaning it again? Well, it does need it...

Loads Of Bitches

Last night in Calgary there was some interesting weather. A couple of the areas in the south west of the city had what is suspected to be a tornado touch down. This isn’t like a football touchdown which is good or bad depending on which team you are a fan of, but the kind anyone in their right mind tries to avoid.

There are a lot of video and photos from people in the area that thought getting their cameras was a better idea than getting into some kind of cover. Luckily the damage was minimal, just a few houses and sheds destroyed, but no people were injured. I guess that as far as tornados go this was a pretty mild one. It didn’t even make the front page of the Herald. I will grant you that the Herald isn’t one of the top ten papers in the world, but I would have thought that a tornado would trump next years Stampede centennial, the name of a new pedestrian footbridge or the fact that our parking rates are the same as in New York city. It did make page three.

The city is waiting for Environment Canada to determine if it was indeed a tornado. I don’t know, high winds, ominous black, rotating clouds that look like the finger of God and of course the property destruction. I guess it is somewhere between a dirt devil and an F- five tornado. It wasn’t strong enough to drop a house on any evil witches, but if I had been there it would have been strong enough to fill my pants.

When did tornados become normal in Canada? The only tornados that I had heard of as a kid was when some trailer park in Kansas or Iowa was shredded by one. I don’t recall any in Canada. I will grant you that my memory is dodgy at best, but I am sure I would remember a huge circular wind that destroyed a city and killed hundreds of people. I remember dirt devils in the school playground and trying to catch them. I guess they were magical beings that would bring you luck if you managed to catch one, much like a leprechaun. I suppose that it is possible that our population has grown to the extent that there are now more human habitations where twisters used to play unnoticed.

The government assures us that the weather hasn’t changed (probably), but we are just in a thirty year cycle. Maybe...but what about the extra cold/hot winters and the extra hot/cold summers? I don’t know what is going on, but I want it to stop!

The problem with the whole weather thing is that there is nothing we can do about it except clean up afterwards and complain. If there is a plus to this whole weather thing, it is that I live in a house not built from straw or sticks which is located on a hill, and to the best of my knowledge there are no evil witches in my neighbourhood. Bitches we have loads of, but no witches.