Early Flight Hell

I have officially placed a moratorium on early morning travel—specifically travel involving flights departing before eight a.m.

Possibly, I will place a ban on late evening travel, as well, but there are only so many things I can rant about at any one time. Although, as I sit on my flight to Bermuda from Toronto like an Oreo packed inside its plastic tray, listening to the squeals of the baby to my rear and the wails of the toddler to my right, I have also implemented a West Jet travel ban. It’s just that kind of day.

And on a related topic, I have discovered that “Tide-to-Go” doesn’t work and that sandwiches that cost almost twenty dollars are not worth it, even if you are paying with Canadian dollars. But I digress…

When you want to visit your mother in the seemingly remote location of Sydney, Nova Scotia, you book your ticket during a particularly energetic  day. On that day, you can take on the world. Maybe even run marathons. You’ve discovered a simple two-flight approach to achieving this travel goal that involves neither dog-sled nor hovercraft, nor bush plane, and you think (on that sunny Bermudaful day) that getting up at 3:30 am to catch a 6:20 am flight the day of your departure is acceptable. You’ve just gotten an amazing fare and the outbound flight leaves at a civilised time and you love your mother. You’ve got this.

Flight number one is mildly acceptable as you jump around like a checker-piece until you find an aisle seat with no one between you and the drooling guy at the window. But by flight number two, you’re getting tired and your luck has run out. You are seated next to two people who have brought French fries and burgers on board. Your row smells like a greasy spoon.

Hoping to dull the smell, you order a horrible little bottle of white wine, but the flight attendant gives you red, opens it and drips it on your favorite jeans you’ve paid extra for because they are full of holes. Luckily, you’ll discover later that  your mother is a laundry genius, who not only is able to get rid of the wine, but is able to sew up your expensive holes.

Your visit is wonderful, of course, and you are able to single–handedly empty the Atlantic Ocean of its lobster stock. You drink Canadian beer and avoid Canadian wine and eat good things your mother makes. You go for long walks in provincial parks and see pretty little flowers waking from their winter slumber. You forget about the return flight home.

Even when you eventually do remember the harsh reality of the return 6:20 am flight, you remain optimistic. You go to bed early, fluff your pillows and meditate. In that delicate, liminal time between closing your eyes and dreamland, your son messages you and eyes pop open like the Jackpot sign on a slot machine.

You are awake for the duration.

After all, there is worrying to do. Your mind jumps from child to child imagining the worse possible life scenarios for each of your darlings. When you exhaust all possibilities from homelessness to leprosy,  you turn your thoughts to the devastation of  global warming and the impossibility of world peace.

On top of those worries, what if you fall asleep and miss your 3:30, 3:35, & 3:40 alarms you’ve been checking and rechecking for the last four hours?

Maybe food will help you sleep. You get up and look for something to eat. You forage through your mother’s cupboards. What if your dog develops arthritis? You forage through the refrigerator.  What if you develop arthritis? What if your children do? What if they already have?

You decide to eat the muffin your mother has lovingly set aside for your early-morning breakfast and worry that maybe you’ll be hungry in the morning (now that you’ve eaten your breakfast) and you’ll  have to toast an English muffin which will likely set off the smoke detector like it did on your last visit when you left on an early flight.  This is why your mother put the muffin out for you in the first place. You worry that you shouldn’t have eaten the muffin. You worry you might lock yourself out of the house without your suitcase like you did last time. There are so many scenarios to consider.

So you go back to bed to contemplate the democratic nomination. Isn’t it time for a female president?

Somewhere between 3 and 3:15 am you drift into a peaceful sleep only to be awaken ten minutes later by alarm number one. You stumble out of bed, and go about the business of your departure. Luckily, your vampire cousin has volunteered to take you to the airport before he returns to bed for the daylight hours. For this, and the lobsters he has slaughtered during your visit, you are grateful.

The rest is a blur until you stumble disoriented, into Toronto Pearson Airport in search of an early morning lunch. You no longer know what time of the day or night it is, but you are hungry for something that isn’t a muffin. Unable to locate a Starbucks, you press buttons on one of the roughly 2000 fancy food ordering iPads strategically positioned all over the terminal and, voila’ you are served a twenty-dollar BLT (okay, that price included some bottled water, but not the iPad.) In your dazed and confused state, you manage to drip toxic mayonnaise on your favourite hole-free pants. You go in search of a remedy.  Nine dollars later, the Tide-to-go is a fail, but you’ve found a Starbucks and are now down an additional four dollars.

On the final leg of your journey, you listen to the babies while assuming the West-Jet-mandated Oreo position and vow that, somehow and someway, you’ll visit your mother again using a mode of transportation that  involves neither West Jet nor an early morning flight.