UMTravels

Up at 7am with a wake up call. Showered and on the road half an hour later.

Feeling more sluggish this morning than any other of the drive days. I had to even pull over and take a power nap at one point. Maybe I should have saved the $110 ($13.75 an hour, but they didn’t charge that way – but compared to the $6.25 an hour for my Yellowknife room because of early check-in)

Got to the Edmonton International Airport a couple of minutes after one, delayed by that nap, and a nasty accident on Hwy 16 west of Edmonton… good thing I had my GPS unit with me otherwise I would have been seriously lost with only a map that covered Alaska and Northwest Canada… and end right about were Edmonton is.

The car was covered in dead bugs, and had over 2300 kilometers of miles from my trip… total bill for the three day rental? $67 Canadian. I spent more than twice that much on gas. For as anal as they were at check-out about car condition, he didn’t give it a second look – maybe it was looking better than all the marks on the check-out sheet made it appear.

With a flight at 6pm – needless to say, I was a tad early. And after waiting around eating, drinking, reading – the plane which had been on-time all day, suddenly was 15 minutes late (still time to make our dinner reservation at the Thirteen Coins by the airport), then 30 minutes, then 60 minutes, then 90 minutes, then back to 60… why all this juggling? The airport was under Red Alert – NO ground movement, which meant our inbound flight was feet from the gate, and that’s where it, and four other planes in similar states stayed for those 90+ minutes. Suddenly being stuck in a terminal with bars, bathrooms, Starbucks, duty-free, didn’t look too bad.

Lightning strikes in the area is what caused the Red Alert – not surprising considering all the lightning and thunder that I say on yesterday’s drive. And I forgot to mention in yesterday’s report of the double rainbows, quads if you count two on each side and blank in the middle of the clouds that were also part of yesterday’s drive.

After the bar closed at 5:30 (ours was the last flight out of the International Terminal), we were down to the Starbucks, which luckily stayed open to provide people with coffee and pastries – personally I wish they’d had something more savory as I’m not a big sweets fan, but the Apple Fritter went down OK. At the hour mark past due, I went back to the Starbuck and grabbed an orange juice… and then went to the loo to dump some of the duty-free vodka I’d bought into the top of it – make lemonade out of lemons they say, or in this case, screwdrivers out of duty free.

Finally arrived in Seattle at 8:30 – Swanda at the ready to pick me up after a little miscommunication and take me back to my place. But at that point it’s almost his bedtime, so cocktails are on my own, with a grilled sandwich for company and sustenance.

Early to bed for me as well.

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