From the Road

July 29, 2009 4:20 am - Alarm goes off. Having packed last night and owning a coffee maker with a timer, all I have to do is put clothes on and drink coffee. Praise the day the coffee maker with timer was invented.

5:20 am - Best Man In the World (aka Love of My Life) drives me to airport. If a 5am ride to the airport isn't love, I don't know what is.

6:00am - 7:10 am - Drink coffee. Conveniently, I am at the last few rows of the heel flap of Pomatomus, which is exactly the right level of skill requirement at this point in the caffeination process.

7:15 am - board airplane number 1. Window seat, behind woman with two small and well-behaved children and in front of apparently completely indifferent woman with loudly crying toddler. When flight attendant asks her if she can get her anything, woman replies that "he'll go to sleep eventually". Praise the day the iPod was invented. Commence turning heel, now being caffeinated enough to count to 19, ssk, k1, and turn.

7:40 am - take-off. Note with some degree of joy that flight is announced as expected to be 2 hours, 12 minutes, and that the latest episode of Limenviolet is 2:06:34. Giggle intermittently and begin gusset.

10:53 am (EDT): Arrive in Toronto. Set what must be some sort of International Record that will Stand For Decades when I find my way to U.S. Connections, retrieve my suitcase, go through customs, drop my suitcase, and clear security in EIGHT MINUTES.

11:40 am: After wandering the airport shops for a while, begin search for food. Go to kiosk number one, stand there, alone, 2 feet away from three staff members having a conversation. One finally pauses for breath, and acknowledges my existence. "What kind of soup do you have today?" I ask. I swear to you she looked at me as if I had asked her if peach trees grew on Jupiter. "What?" I repeat what I thought was a fairly straightforward question, she shakes her head, points to a sign. "Um, I dunno, Vegetable I think." I move on.

11:50 am: After searching for a while for food that isn't burgers or fries or pre-packaged egg salad, I locate a Tim Hortons. "What kind of soup do you have today?" I ask, after making sure I have scanned every surface in the area for signs and find none. Again, the peach tree look. I swear to you. (Anyone from Toronto, is there some Hogtown-centric way one is supposed to phrase this question?) I repeat what is now becoming a bit of a scary question to ask. "Oh,", says she, "Hearty Vegetable and um, cream of, um, mushroom." I order the Soup and Bagel Combo, multi-grain bagel toasted, vegetable soup. (Aside mini-rant: there was a DINNER ROLL in the bag with my soup and bagel combo. Every other combo that comes with said dinner roll stipulates that on the menu board. I've got a soup and BAGEL combo. What the frikkenfrakkenrazenmaPHRICK do I need a damn dinner roll for?!?! I'm sorry I know this has nothing to do with anything and doesn't really matter but this has now happened to me on several occasions at several different Timmies and I think I'm a relatively intelligent human being and I just don't get it.)

12:35 pm: Arrive at gate as instructed by my boarding pass for my 1:10pm departure time.

1:30 pm: Dear Air Canada staff: When a flight is delayed, even by as relatively little as this, you'll probably have less irritated people on your hands (this knitter not included - I was almost done a repeat and for the first time understood the t-shirt that says "I knit so I don't kill people") if you maybe tell people that there's going to be a delay instead of alternately looking at us blankly and reading your book. When passengers board said delayed flight, you might want to put down your yogurt, stop bitching about how much stuff you have to lug around on this little plane, and maybe say hi or look at boarding cards or something. I dunno, just a thought.

1:32 pm: Find my seat, take out sock in progress.

1:33 pm: Seat mate moves to another seat. (Yes, seriously.) I am amused by this.

 1:35 pm: Take-off. Conclude that I must be in the process of being rewarded by the knitting gods for patiently saving podcasts for travel when the flight time is predicted to be 1:06, and the latest episode of Cast On is 1:05.

1:36 pm: Hear my first Boston accent. Any and all travel-related stress disappears. He looks just like Charles Emerson Winchester III from M*A*S*H*, which makes it even better.

2:00ish: Think about how fun it might be to write a book. Finally figure out what the mirror of a k2tog tbl would be, too late for consistency through the whole sock but early enough for consistency through the foot. (Oh well, better late than never.) Drink diet coke. Learn about Corgi socks via podcast.

3:00 pm: Arrive in Boston, starting second repeat of foot pattern (gusset done). Find transport, gawk at city en route to...

4:00 pm: COOLEST HOTEL EVER. Not swanky, by no means fancy, but old, and brick and oak and just lovely. I have a kitchen and a double bay window (yay for being upgraded!) and a lovely view of more brick and oak and...sigh. I love old cities, I really do. The website doesn't do it justice. I'm unpacked, I'm settled in, I'm off to have dinner with the 11 others at this conference (of 650 or so) who are also Canadian. Tomorrow I'm going to put my work brain in and go soak up as much information and knowledge and wisdom and insight as I can. But today? Today was good too.