En Route

Currently sitting in the Toronto airport eating dried strawberries from Target; wondering if I should maybe buy something real to eat?

I mean, I can survive off of beef jerky and dried fruits and vegetables in the same of frugality, right? I would think so.

I already got set back ~$40 because I had to unexpectedly cab between LaGuardia and Brooklyn last night. Listen to this shit:

When I booked my flight, I did so through the Chase Sapphire website so I could redeem my points for a free flight. But naturally, it did not come without complications. My Delta flight departed from Cleveland on Monday night and arrived in NYC ~8:30pm. I was told in Cleveland that I would have to claim my bag and recheck it with WestJet (with whom I flew from NYC to Toronto) in order to board my next flight; I was slightly annoyed by this, as I did not want to pay the checking fee twice AND the Delta website lists WestJet as a travel partner (to me, this meant that my luggage would transfer on its own; perhaps this was a naïve assumption). SO, I landed in NYC and got my bag and promptly discovered that I could not re-check my bag with WestJet until the next morning, as my next flight did not depart until 7:45am.

This essentially meant that I couldn’t get back into any decent part of the airport, as my luggage has my pocket knife and tons of liquid toiletries and is also just massive. Since I was hardly interested in being in an environment that lacked seats, food, booze, and adequate WiFi, what ended up happening is I sat on the sidewalk of Terminal D (that Ghost Town terminal of LaGuardia) doing word puzzles in a book I had bought from the Cleveland airport, and waited for my sister’s flight to get in at 11pm. It was a long two hours.

So after another hour-long wait for a cab and the subsequent 30 minute ride, we arrived at her Brooklyn apartment where we ate and passed right the fuck out. After a good night’s sleep of roughly two hours, I was back up and getting my shit together to go back to the black lagoon that is Terminal D.

Everything went relatively well and I thought I was in for smooth-sailing after that; I was wrong. Shortly after we took off, the WestJet flight attendant handed out papers asking us information such as our name and birth date and if we were bringing in excessive amounts of certain products; in my current state of ignorant youth, it did not occur to me that I actually needed to fill out this paper. A side-eye observation of the well-traveled businessman next to me placing his card neatly in the magazine holder on the seat in front of him confirmed this assumption.

I proceeded to yet again pass right the fuck out in order to placate this sleep-deprived state of mine (that will eventually call for taking that adderall I’ve been carrying around for a year). During that time, the seasoned businessman next to me had probably filled out his little paper, as I noticed it sticking out of his laptop bag when we were getting off the plane. *Thank fuck I tucked mine into my puzzle book,* I thought to myself.

So we got off the plane and I start looking around for baggage claim, as I was told I would (again) need to recheck my bag. I walked up to the first woman I saw and she told me I needed to go through customs first.

Now, this was the first I had heard of this. I know it makes sense to need to go through this process as I was just arriving from an international flight, but for some odd reason it had not occurred to me that I would need to go through this process since I was staying in the airport for my layover. I suppose I thought that this screening process took place at the airpot exit? I don’t know. But I walked up to a computer terminal where I was prompted to scan my passport; I had to insert it three times before I did it correctly. Then I was prompted to insert my “card." *What the fuck card are they talking about? Did I need some sort of travel document to enter Canada? What the fuck,* I thought to myself. Then a convenient little animation came across the screen prompting me to insert the paper that was handed out to me by the flight attendant. 

*HA! I KEPT THAT THING!* I felt so proud of myself, only to look over and see that they were also provided right there next to the terminals. Oh well.

So I filled this thing out best I could, and that apparently was not good enough as I had left certain things blank thinking that I could fly by with that. I found out within seconds that no, that is not how this works. A woman supervising these terminals came over to help me, and I still don’t entirely understand what she directed me to write on that paper. It was asking me to list the value of the foreign goods I was bringing into Canada and, you know, everything I had was a foreign good? (I should probably educate myself about this, actually.)

So anyway, I got through just fine and am now sitting near my gate and eating dried strawberries. It is currently 10:53am and my flight departs at 5:10, so I am going to get really friendly with the Toronto airport today.

Which, btw, is really nice. I don’t know if today is just slow or if this is normal, but I was one of maybe 5 people who were going through the security checkpoint earlier. There are places to sit. There aren’t massive lines trailing throughout roped dividers. The only seemingly busy parts of the airport are the gates where people are waiting to board their flights. I would expect an international airport to be busier? I wonder if people arrive later to the airport here in Canada so you end up with not as many people standing around twiddling their thumbs because they got to the airport 2.5 hours early “just in case.” Or maybe not; maybe I just like Canada more so of course this airport seems nicer.

See? Even the bathrooms are considerate. I love Canada.

Next stop: DUBLIN

(well technically St. John’s, Newfoundland - but only for a short while)