[Read the first installment here. -Scott] When I was a boy—yes, another post that begins with those dreaded five words—I realized at a young age that I was blessed with two main talents. Talent One was my gift for committing the weekly TV Guide listings to memory. Talent Two was the ability to turn the smallest of concerns into insomnia-inducing, hand-wringing worries. In short, I was a prematurely anxious child who could reliably tell you when 60 Minutes was on (Sunday, 7 p.m., channel 5). Yes, I was quite a piece of work. (more…)
[Missed the earlier installments? Scroll down, lovely reader, and you’ll find them. -jones] I was all business as I made my way through the overcrowded Toronto airport, lowering my shoulder if needed. I might or might not have knocked the wind out of a man in a trench-coat who was looking at his phone instead of looking at where he was walking. If I did, apologies to you, good sir. Please look where you are going next time. I was desperately trying to recall the protocol in Toronto for switching from a Canadian flight to a U.S. flight. My best…
My time up in the air was, as always, complete bliss. Despite the cramped conditions and rampant flatulence from the crush of humanity around me—what is it about airplanes that makes people fart so much? scientists, can you please do a study?—I adore my time on airplanes. I always have. Last October I did 10 hours to Tokyo like a pro. In fact, any flight that lasts for less than five hours—which is any flight that isn’t going from one coast to another—always feels prematurely truncated to me. Whenever the announcement is made that the cabin needs to be prepared…
[Missed Part 1? Shortcut to reading it is here.] Vancouver International Airport is not the world’s largest airport by any means, though it does boast several well-vacuumed terminals, and, like all Canadian airports, a Tim Hortons counter manned by bored Chinese women wearing hairnets. The odds that the man and I—the same angry little man who had attempted to run me down with his pick-up truck in Gastown 24 hours earlier and then gave me a verbal dressing down from his lowered driver’s side window because, according to him, I was in his way—would wind up not only in the…
Three days before Christmas I showed up at the airport to make my annual 3,000-mile holiday journey back East. Ten a.m. and already the terminal resembled a low-grade soccer riot. I found an available kiosk and did my best to satisfy it. I plugged my passport into the passport slot and answered the requisite questions. (No, kiosk, I do not have any flammable paints, or crossbows, or dry ice in my luggage.) Once the skeptical kiosk was more or less satisfied, it kicked out one of what should have been two boarding passes. Hmm, I thought. I’ll have to get this…
