and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Yep, I'm stranded in toronto, one-fifth of the way to Vancouver.

Boo.

I shall regale you with the details of my aborted westward journey. It is long but the experience was infinitely longer, I promise:

2am. Montreal. Go to sleep good n drunk so I will look and feel my best when I wake up at 5am.

5am. Wake up, looking and feeling my best.

5:55am. Get to Dorval airport. I had naively assumed it would be deserted, given that it was not yet 6am, but of course due to the blackout there were very long lineups at every check-in desk. My flight leaves at 6:45; I'm never going to make it.

6am. Decide to express check-in myself at a kiosk in hopes of bypassing the line. Unfortunately I forget that I have luggage to check. Boarding
pass in hand, I return to line.

6:02. Decide to skip the line. Approach Air Canada agent directing traffic at the front of the line.

me: I'm going to miss my flight.
her: [examines my boarding pass] Yes, you are.
me: I don't want to miss it.
her: when did you get here?
me: just now.
her: these people have been waiting here for hours.
me: I don't want to miss my flight.
her: why were you late?
me: ...
her: traffic?
me: [Obviously lying] sure... traffic.
her: [sighs] okay, come with me.

Sweet!!!!

So I scramble back through the line to where I've left my luggage, then scramble through again WITH my luggage, knocking over a post in the process. I carry on regardless. I check in, head to special services to deal with my strappy backpack, and proceed to my gate. En route I realize that I have not been made to pay a 10 airport improvement fee; perhaps the improvements are finished? Yet another good omen. Things are looking up.

6:55am. My flight takes off. This will be a short flight to Toronto; from there I will catch a flight to Vancouver. (Nobody said $99 fares would be convinient...)

8:05am. Land in Toronto. Our plane taxis to.... the de-icing zone.

Shit.

The captain informs us that there are no gates available due to the "recent events" in Toronto. We wait.

8:20am. The captain informs us that all departures prior to 10am have been cancelled due to "recent events". This includes my flight, which was set to take off at 9:45. Crappity.

8:30am. A gate is made available for us. We disembark.

Pearson airport is ridiculous. I just need to make two phone calls: one to the airline to rebook my flight, one to my folks to tell them I need to come home. I would say there are 100 pay phones in the arrivals lounge. Each of them has a lineup of at least 10 people. The phone with the direct line to Air Canada's reservations has a lineup of at least eighty people.

I am not in any of these lines.

It's going to be a long morning.

After spending ten minutes in a paralysed line for a phone, listening to a woman behind me rail at the incompetence of the people ahead of her in line, I hatch a new plan to book my flight over the internet via one of those kiosks they've got scattered about. These have much smaller lines. I leave the line for the phone and wait for the nearest kiosk to become available. While waiting I watch the girl using the kiosk attempt to rebook her flight online. She has no success; first of all the site is excruciatingly slow and second of all it is clearly not going to work, for her or for me. I need a login id and an aeroplan number, neither of which I have, and even then the site fails on every second page. I abandon this new approach and eat one of my four montreal bagels with cream cheese. I wander to a different phone kiosk; on the way I pass an LCBO and seriously consider buying a bottle of whiskey at 9:15am. I'm sure I could find someone to share it with me, but looking and feeling my best, as I mentioned, the thought is less than appealing. I don't go in.

At last I get to a phone. Relatively grumpy and completely exhausted, I call home first. A typically aggravating conversation with family members ("I need to call your mother, she's on her cell phone on her way downtown", etc.) ensues. It doesn't help that I have no idea how long it will take me to rebook my flight and find my luggage. No consensus is reached re coming to pick me up. I decide I will take a cab.

I call Air Canada. the line, of course, is busy.

I notice that the person on the phone next to me is talking to an agent at Air Canada, and that people are handing off this phone to each other as they finish making their changes. I jump into the next exchange and am finally talking to an agent. She informs me that the best she can do is a flight leaving at 1pm tomorrow to Calgary; from there I can catch a flight an hour later to Vancouver. This is turning into a tour of Canadian airports, but I have no choice but to accept. I hand the phone off to the next person and go off in search of my luggage. The baggage claim area is also a mess. There are hundreds of people milling about a carousel with luggage from cancelled flights to US destinations, and at least two hundred more waiting in line to talk to the information desk. I am obviously not going to wait in line so I approach a guy on the floor to whom questions are being addressed. I ask him where my luggage would be if it was supposed to be on a flight to Vancouver that was cancelled. He informs me that all luggage to Canadian desinations is being held, and that when people rebook their flights their luggage will be rerouted. This strikes me as a disaster waiting to happen. He smiles and reassures me that everything will work out. I am not reassured especially since Air Canada fired however many thousands of employees just last week. I resolve to do everything in my power to ensure my luggage finds me when I go to the airport tomorrow, although obviously this will amount to some polite inquiry and perhaps a thump of the desk or two. Everybody in the airport is as screwed as me. For now, though, there's really nothing I can do.

So, luggageless and delayed by a day, I share a cab downtown, arrive home at noon, and collapse into my bed for a three-hour nap.

Like I said,

Boo.

But at least I don't have to sleep at the airport.