daylight’s red-eye flight to Quebec
Jul. 31st, 2009 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sergebroomI’m at my mom’s place, in Québec City, or rather in suburbia’s town of Beauport, where I grew up. I arrived a bit after 9pm yesterday. I’d have shown up earlier except that I had forgotten that, since 1995, Montrél’s Dorval Airport(1) was bound to have changed. It was indeed. Last time, going thru Customs had been a speedy process. This time, not so much. It took about as long as going thru the security theater at American airports, but with the welcome difference that shoe removal wasn’t required and that I didn’t have to stand in what reminded me of David Eddison’s teleportation booth. Yes, I still have a normal human head.
It was rather disconcerting to be on a red-eye flight while in broad daylight. What’s that about? Well, at 5am, as I was getting ready to go to the airport, I went WTF when I noticed that one third on my right eye was quite red – not a pleasant discovery when you’re about to leave in 30 minutes. I figured out that it must have been an extreme reaction to my touching the corner of my eye a few minutes after washing my hair. So much for baby shampoo. I decided that, if I went to Emergency, it’d take hours before I’d meet somebody who’d simply tell me to keep an eye on my eye. Which I did throughout the day. After the short flight from Albuquerque to Denver, the redness looked no worse and no better, my eye felt normal, and so did my sight.
The flight from Albuquerque to Denver was short. It took barely more than one hour, and the wait for the next and last plane took twice that long. At least I did have a next plane, which is better than if Denver had been my final destination, what with the flight attendant referring to such people as ‘terminating in Denver’. That, plus signs indicating that airport bathrooms also serve as tornado shelters, makes me wonder if I was lucky to come back alive from Denver’s worldcon of last year.
Waiting for the plane that’d take me Denver to Montrél was a revelation. Officially, my 3.5-hour flight was thru United, on an Air Canada plane, at a gate run by Lufthtansa personnel from Vulcan. Ok, I made up that last bit. The one about Vulcan. They asked Americans about to board to fill up a form with contact information, in case something happened. I wasn’t aware that my fellow citizens and I ran the risk of being abducted while on Canadian grounds, but one cannot be too careful. So much for my living in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
After landing, and after the above-mentioned customs stop, and after my getting a cup of coffee for the trip to Québec City, I briskly walked over to Enterprise Car Rental. The personnel was courteous, but it was amusing. Here you had an anglophone trying to speak French to a francophone who kept reverting to speaking English because, well, that’s the language I use 99.99999% of the time(2). It may have helped me to transition from one language to the next as I’ve managed to say almost nothing to my mom in English, a language she doesn’t understand.
Driving out of the airport was… ah… interesting. It was built in a western area of the city that may have been sparsely populated at the time, but not so much anymore. As a result, there’s no way the access roads could be modernized to expand the merging lanes from something longer than 20 feet. I saw two collisions come that close to happening as a result. I emerged unscathed, followed the signs leading to Highway 20’s eastbound direction and, as soon as I could, I popped in some CDs of songs of my youth to populate my thoughts for the 200-mile ride to Québec City.
I went to bed at 11pm, but woke up at 6am today, in spite of yesterday’s long hours, and in spite of its being 4am in Albuquerque. This would seem to indicate that time-zone differences don’t affect me much. On the other hand, I usually wake up at 4am in Albuquerque.
Later today, my mom(3) and I paid a visit to my dad’s grave. After that, we dropped by some neighbors of hers. One of them, only 11 years older than me, had not seen me in 25 years and seemed especially glad to see me.
My mom had twice mentionned that I really should wipe the bugs off the windshield of my rental PT-Cruiser. Since my response was “Naaah”, she decided to take a more subtle approach – she handed me a wet rag. I took it easy today. I scribbled some notes about my impressions of the revived Realms of Fantasy, the first issue of which I finished on my way here. Tomorrow, I’m going to a party given by my friend Nicole.
Besides that… My old neighborhood keeps changing. It had done so a great deal when I came in 2004, but that’s not surprising, what with my visit before that having been in 1995. The farm lands were all covered with housing developments, shopping malls, garages and some such. This morning, when I looked out the bedroom’s window, I couldn’t see the nunnery anymore, in spite of its being only one mile away, thanks to the buildings that had sprung up in the 5 years since my previous visit. As for the familiar stuff, it feels smaller. Except for the trees. And nieces who were not quite 3 years old when I had last met them, 14 years ago.
Anything else?
I heard seagulls today.
Also, my red eye isn’t so red anymore.
-----------
(1) I know, I know, it’s now the PET International Airport and ‘PET’ doesn’t stand for Positron Emission Tomography, but for Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who’s not related to Garry Trudeau.
(2) The remaining 0.00001%’s French-speaking is when I call my mom, once a month, and when I remind my doggies & kitties that it’s time to eat. Actually, they tell me it’s time to eat long before it’s time to eat, but I don’t listen to them. They sure listen to me when I say the French word for ‘eating’.
(3) Who said I have better manners than her other son does.
It was rather disconcerting to be on a red-eye flight while in broad daylight. What’s that about? Well, at 5am, as I was getting ready to go to the airport, I went WTF when I noticed that one third on my right eye was quite red – not a pleasant discovery when you’re about to leave in 30 minutes. I figured out that it must have been an extreme reaction to my touching the corner of my eye a few minutes after washing my hair. So much for baby shampoo. I decided that, if I went to Emergency, it’d take hours before I’d meet somebody who’d simply tell me to keep an eye on my eye. Which I did throughout the day. After the short flight from Albuquerque to Denver, the redness looked no worse and no better, my eye felt normal, and so did my sight.
The flight from Albuquerque to Denver was short. It took barely more than one hour, and the wait for the next and last plane took twice that long. At least I did have a next plane, which is better than if Denver had been my final destination, what with the flight attendant referring to such people as ‘terminating in Denver’. That, plus signs indicating that airport bathrooms also serve as tornado shelters, makes me wonder if I was lucky to come back alive from Denver’s worldcon of last year.
Waiting for the plane that’d take me Denver to Montrél was a revelation. Officially, my 3.5-hour flight was thru United, on an Air Canada plane, at a gate run by Lufthtansa personnel from Vulcan. Ok, I made up that last bit. The one about Vulcan. They asked Americans about to board to fill up a form with contact information, in case something happened. I wasn’t aware that my fellow citizens and I ran the risk of being abducted while on Canadian grounds, but one cannot be too careful. So much for my living in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
After landing, and after the above-mentioned customs stop, and after my getting a cup of coffee for the trip to Québec City, I briskly walked over to Enterprise Car Rental. The personnel was courteous, but it was amusing. Here you had an anglophone trying to speak French to a francophone who kept reverting to speaking English because, well, that’s the language I use 99.99999% of the time(2). It may have helped me to transition from one language to the next as I’ve managed to say almost nothing to my mom in English, a language she doesn’t understand.
Driving out of the airport was… ah… interesting. It was built in a western area of the city that may have been sparsely populated at the time, but not so much anymore. As a result, there’s no way the access roads could be modernized to expand the merging lanes from something longer than 20 feet. I saw two collisions come that close to happening as a result. I emerged unscathed, followed the signs leading to Highway 20’s eastbound direction and, as soon as I could, I popped in some CDs of songs of my youth to populate my thoughts for the 200-mile ride to Québec City.
I went to bed at 11pm, but woke up at 6am today, in spite of yesterday’s long hours, and in spite of its being 4am in Albuquerque. This would seem to indicate that time-zone differences don’t affect me much. On the other hand, I usually wake up at 4am in Albuquerque.
Later today, my mom(3) and I paid a visit to my dad’s grave. After that, we dropped by some neighbors of hers. One of them, only 11 years older than me, had not seen me in 25 years and seemed especially glad to see me.
My mom had twice mentionned that I really should wipe the bugs off the windshield of my rental PT-Cruiser. Since my response was “Naaah”, she decided to take a more subtle approach – she handed me a wet rag. I took it easy today. I scribbled some notes about my impressions of the revived Realms of Fantasy, the first issue of which I finished on my way here. Tomorrow, I’m going to a party given by my friend Nicole.
Besides that… My old neighborhood keeps changing. It had done so a great deal when I came in 2004, but that’s not surprising, what with my visit before that having been in 1995. The farm lands were all covered with housing developments, shopping malls, garages and some such. This morning, when I looked out the bedroom’s window, I couldn’t see the nunnery anymore, in spite of its being only one mile away, thanks to the buildings that had sprung up in the 5 years since my previous visit. As for the familiar stuff, it feels smaller. Except for the trees. And nieces who were not quite 3 years old when I had last met them, 14 years ago.
Anything else?
I heard seagulls today.
Also, my red eye isn’t so red anymore.
-----------
(1) I know, I know, it’s now the PET International Airport and ‘PET’ doesn’t stand for Positron Emission Tomography, but for Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who’s not related to Garry Trudeau.
(2) The remaining 0.00001%’s French-speaking is when I call my mom, once a month, and when I remind my doggies & kitties that it’s time to eat. Actually, they tell me it’s time to eat long before it’s time to eat, but I don’t listen to them. They sure listen to me when I say the French word for ‘eating’.
(3) Who said I have better manners than her other son does.
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no subject
Date: Aug. 6th, 2009 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 7th, 2009 03:36 am (UTC)As for the redness... It went away, as I had hoped. It WAS quite disquieting at first.
no subject
Date: Aug. 7th, 2009 12:55 am (UTC)These days almost the only person to whom I speak Spanish is my mother, which doesn't do any good to my command of the the language.
no subject
Date: Aug. 7th, 2009 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 7th, 2009 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 8th, 2009 12:29 pm (UTC)