In transit

Air Canada did not, regrettably, live up to the precedent set last week by Air Canada Cargo. The flight to Vancouver had already been delayed by an hour when I reached Heathrow and, once boarded, we then sat on the tarmac for a further hour waiting for a take-off slot. I consequently missed my connection in Vancouver and had to take a later flight to Victoria.

It had already been a long day. When I return to the UK in ten day’s time I will need – to preserve as much leave as possible for further visits to BC – to head straight for the office. To facilitate this I drove to the School first thing on Thursday and, leaving the car there, hauled my bags to the tube station and took the train to Heathrow. With the subsequent delays the whole journey took around 20 hours. When I arrived all I could manage was to collapse and go straight to sleep.

So – what did we do the next day?

We got up early – naturally – caught the ferry to the mainland and drove for 5 hours to Kamloops, birthplace of the Kickass Canada Girl. Though the weather at either end of the trip was fair enough for the time of year, the route traverses the Coquihalla pass and we found ourselves passing through some pretty serious snow.

We are in Kamloops for the Girl’s aunt’s 80 birthday and today – Saturday – there is a party at her cousin’s house.

Phew! I might just be getting a little old to sustain this pace…

I am writing this on my Galaxy Note sitting in a Starbucks in Kamloops, which is a a new experience and not the easiest thing to do. I will write more – and much more elegantly – once we are back in Victoria on Monday. All I have to figure out now is how to get the picture to accompany this post off my camera and onto the blog. Neither the Note nor the x10 has a standard USB port, so I will probably have to borrow a computer elsewhere to do so. This is a problem that will need to be addressed for the future.