The long flight to Canada

Okay,so I've done a bit of flying around the planet in my time and normally I don't have too much in the way of bad luck with schedules but this trip was different,very different.I left home in Cairns at the ungodly hour of 4am in order to get to the Qantas check-in desk before the staff get really cranky and start charging extra for everyones baggage.I had only two pieces of baggage to check in with the biggest being my bike, all my camping gear,panniers,wetsuit(who brings a wetsuit on a cross-continental ride??!!!),running gear,swim gear and god knows what else in my cardboard box.The other piece was my trailer which folds up and fits neatly into the bag which clips on to the trailer itself when on the road.Inside the bag along with my trailer was even more stuff like my computer stuff,bike lock,tools and more bike-clothes. I had no idea how much all this stuff weighed and was,as always,worried about how much I was going to be charged for all my excess baggage.

I decided to wear my airport work uniform in the hope that the Qantas rep would be nice to me and as luck would have it who would I find at the check-in desk none other than one of the ground services managers who I deal with every day on the tarmac.She made some smart comments to me about losing my bike and then without a worry she checked my 29 kilo bike box and 11 kilo trailer bag on the flight for free.I was 20 kilos overweight and for that flight and she checked my bags all the way to Vancouver a nice favour that ended up saving me a lot of money.

The first of my five flights was pretty uneventfull but after landing in Brisbane the fun started.I headed straight to the China Airlines check-in desk where I waited for two hours to be checked in.Bloody hell,I didn't even have any bags to give her!As our departure time closed in we were informed that our plane had been diverted to Sydney and we would have a delay of about three hours.That was good news as all the passengers weren't checked in by the scheduled departure time anyway.The bad news for everyone else though was that as the plane was full they were charging $75AUS per kilo for excess baggage-WTF!!!!!Thank god for my friend in Cairns is all I can say.After what seemed an eternity of sitting around in the hell-hole that is Brisbanes' excuse for an International airport I found myself sitting in my comfy aircraft seat with my personal little tv in front of me, ready for some serious marathon movie watching.

The next two legs of the fight went pretty well and after the longest Friday 13th I have ever experienced I found myself in Vancouver airport waiting for my flight to Halifax.The only problem with that fight was that it was the red-eye and by the time we got on our plane Vancouver airport seemed a very lonely place to be,not lonely enough that I really wanted to sit next to a woman with her newborn for the whole trip across the country AAAAAAAH!Onward and upward though and we taxied out on to the runway where our pilot told us there was a problem and we would be returning to the gate.No worries,only a thirty minute delay,even I could forgive that.Unfortunately one of the hosties(sorry,flight attendants) had other plans.Apparently she did some creative accounting in relation to her work schedule and figured out that she had now been on shift too long to make the flight to Toronto.The captain informed us that there would be a two hour delay as the airline tried to find an entire cabin crew to replace the one that had,by now,all exceeded their legal daily workload.Jesus frickin Christ!!!

Once that was sorted and the new crew arrived(two hours later) we were away again(this time without the mom and baby),off to Halifax via Toronto.I already knew that I would miss my connection but did not know how long I would be delayed in Toronto.That was until I got off the plane and was given the news that I would have to wait three hours for another flight.Now that sucked the big one but what really pissed me off was once I had settled in at Starbucks and was preparing for yet another wait I heard the final boarding call for a bloody flight to Halifax,again WTF!!!I was there,my bags were somewhere but the bloody plane that could be taking us together to Halifax left without us.Too close a connection for me to get on board apparently.GRRRR!! Another few hours later and another few dollars poorer,courtesy of the curse of airport food prices,I was on my way to Halifax,finally.

Halifax airport was a great site to behold as we flew in and I was beginning to get really excited now that I was so close to my final destination.I was happy as well to see that my bike and trailer had arrived as well and in one piece it seemed,now all I had to do was figure out how to get to my hostel in town some thirty kilometers away.A taxi was out of the question as the $53CDN fare was just extortion so that left me the airport shuttle at $18 and of course the $6 fee for my bike.How much money could I spend in one day trying to get to this part of the world?

Ticket bought and first in line for the bus half an hour later.The huge crowd of college kids waiting around the airport had other ideas though and as the bus departure time approached there were about twenty of us at the bus stop.The bus driver obviously had plans as to which hotels he goes to first and loads the bags accordingly,my bike however,didn't fit into his plans.By the time his efficient system had worked it's magic I was left at the bus stop with a young girl wondering if I was ever going to get to Halifax.We would have to wait for an hour for the next bus.By this stage I just didn't care.

The up side of that wait was that I got to meet Chelsea,a really nice college girl from Illinois.She was part of a huge group of 600 college students coming to Halifax to join a national program called Semester at Sea where and old cruise ship is used as a floating University for ten weeks of cruising and learning about other cultures.This lot were going to Europe and they were all very excited to be going part of a great adventure on the college version of the Love Boat.

Chelsea asked what I was up to and when I told her of my ride and the charity I was raising money for she told me that she thought it was awesome and that her father had died of cancer only three weeks prior.It was a sobering moment for me and I thought of how she must be feeling leaving her family for such a long time so soon after a tragedy like that.She is a class act and I'm glad I met her.We spent most of the next hour discussing the upcoming US elections and before we knew it we were back at the bus stop for our second try.No worries this time and we were on the bus with the promise of delivery to the door of the hostel some five blocks from the center of town.

We unloaded our stuff at the front door and checked in to a really cool little hostel which looked from the lobby more like a coffee shop/second hand bookstore than a backpackers.It is such a cool place and the vibe was very friendly especially when,after putting all my stuff away,I stumble upon the kitchen to find a bunch of half drunk college kids playing some ridiculous board game the rules of which seemed totally up to drunken interpretation.I set a new personal record for a hostel in that I was drinking my first beer within ten minutes of arriving,a beautiful dark beer brewed right in Halifax by a local micro-brewery.It just seemed the right thing to do.

We joined the group in the kitchen and hostel life took over my psyche once again.What a great place and what a great bunch of young nutters to share it with.After 47 hours of traveling I deserved to seriously unwind and soak in the local atmosphere and soak it in we did-until three in the morning.That however, is another story.