I flew back from Winnipeg via Montreal yesterday. The flights themselves were uneventful, but the weather in Montreal was crummy and there were delays arriving at the gate. We couldn’t use our originally assigned gate and ended up having to walk across the tarmac from an outdoor “gate” to the terminal building. We made our way to the gate for our flight to Ottawa and waited in the bar next to the gate for them to call our flight. We boarded on-time, but our departure was a bit delayed because of the de-icing procedures. While we were in line to take position for take-off, one of the pilots came back with a flashlight and peered at the wings to make sure that we hadn’t iced up while taxiing around (they only applied de-icing fluid, not anti-icing fluid). Fortunately, we weren’t icing up so we were able to take off.

After landing at Ottawa, I headed to the baggage carousel with my co-worker and we patiently awaited the appearance of our suitcases on the carousel. It started up and spat out a few suitcases and then stopped moving. The guy sitting behind me on the plane came up to me and said all of the bags had been off-loaded and that we should head to the baggage claim counter before the rush.

It seems out bags never made it onto the plane in Montreal. So, we filled our delayed baggage claims with the airline, given tracking numbers and told they would be delivered between 8am and 9am Saturday morning.

Well, as of noon, I still don’t have my suitcase. The website says “RECEIVED AT AIRPORT / DELIVERY PROCESS INITIATED”, but no one has called to say it’s on its way.

To be fair, of the ten flights I’ve flown on with Air Canada this month, this is the first problem I had with my luggage not arriving. But it’s still frustrating.

After spending a couple more hours in the Air Canada lounge, we finally boarded our flight and were wheels up around 1430 — about 3.5 hours after our scheduled departure time.  The flight itself was uneventful and we landed on the north runway at Pearson.  Unfortunately, this meant that we had to taxi to the other side of the airport, which itself took about 15 or 20 minutes.  But, we finally arrived at the gate and quickly made our way to the taxi queue.  We caught a taxi to our hotel and checked in about four hours later than we had planned.  After dropping our stuff in our hotel rooms, we headed to the regional office and did what we came to do.  We finally called it a day around 8:30pm and headed back to the hotel for dinner.

Hopefully, our flight back to Ottawa Friday evening will be less eventful than this one was.

I’m heading to Toronto with my boss today to visit our regional office and observe collection of a survey. Because we’re only going to be there today and tomorrow, we decided to fly to maximize the time we could spend in the office.

Naturally, the weather in both Ottawa and Toronto is terrible and flights are delayed at both airports.

The aviation weather observations in Ottawa are:

METAR CYOW 221600Z 01013KT 1SM -SN DRSN VV006 M05/M05 A2979 RESN RMK SN8 /S03/ SLP093=

SPECI CYOW 221627Z 36014KT 1/2SM R07/2600FT/N R32/2600FT/N SN DRSN VV005 M05/ RMK SN8=

The observations at Toronto Pearson are:

METAR CYYZ 221600Z CCA 36017G22KT 1SM R33L/P6000FT/N R33R/5000FT/U -SN BKN009 OVC021 M03/M05 A2984 RMK SN4SF2SC2 SLP111=

Basically, it’s snowing, windy and the visibility sucks.

TAF CYOW 221440Z 221512 36015KT 1/2SM SN VV003 TEMPO 1516 2SM -SN
OVC006
FM1600Z 36012KT 1SM -SN OVC005 TEMPO 1621 2SM -SN OVC008
FM2100Z 34012KT 6SM -SN SCT008 OVC020 TEMPO 2103 3SM -SN OVC008
FM0300Z 31012KT P6SM OVC025
RMK NXT FCST BY 18Z=

TAF CYYZ 221440Z 221512 01015G25KT 1/2SM SN OVC004 TEMPO 1516 1SM -SN
OVC012
FM1600Z 01015G25KT 1SM -SN OVC004 TEMPO 1617 2SM -SN OVC008
FM1700Z 01015KT 2SM -SN OVC007 TEMPO 1721 5SM -SN OVC010
FM2100Z 33012KT 6SM -SHSN SCT008 OVC012 TEMPO 2123 2SM -SHSN
OVC008
FM2300Z 34012KT P6SM BKN030 TEMPO 2301 4SM -SHSN OVC020
RMK NXT FCST BY 18Z=

And it’s going to be like this for a while.

At least we’re sitting in the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge, so there’s food and drink.

I realized a week ago that I hadn’t taken any significant time off work since the week of Ken and Margaret’s wedding at the end of June so I booked this week off work and started looking for somewhere to go. Saturday evening, I finally settled on Miami Beach and made all the arrangements. Tuesday morning, I headed to the airport and a few hours later landed in sunny Miami. Collecting my luggage, I hopped in a taxi and about an hour later I was checked into my hotel and lying on the beach. (In fact, I spent most of the daylight hours from then until noon today (Saturday) doing pretty much the same thing.)

There are two things about my stay in Miami Beach that really surprised me: the amount of construction and the amount of french I heard being spoken.

The demolition and construction of hotels seems to be the biggest past-time in Miami Beach. Walking along the boardwalk, I must have seen at least a dozen hotels in some state construction or demolition. I looked for the hotel I stayed in last time I visited Miami Beach, but all I came across was the foundation of a new luxury hotel-to-be. Looking across at the skyline of Miami, you can see lots of cranes silhouetted against the sky.

Walking around, I heard a surprising amount of french being spoken. It’s surprising because in Miami Beach I would expect to hear a lot of spanish, and while there is a fair bit of spanish being spoken, the language that caught my ear most often was french.  I also heard a fair bit of german.  From time to time I even heard a bit of english, usually with a British accent.

There are some pictures available in my gallery.

My work has taken me to Halifax this week. I arrived Sunday evening after an uneventful flight and met up with my colleagues Monday morning. One person had flown down Saturday while the other flew down early Monday morning. Our work has been in the late-afternoons and evening, so we’ve had the days to ourselves to “play tourist”. Yesterday morning, my colleague, Amanda, and I met up for breakfast and then I introduced her to geocaching. It only took one geocache for her to get the bug and we headed off to find another two caches before our boss arrived at the hotel. We met up then headed out to wander along the waterfront. John and I headed off towards Pier 21 while Amanda did her own thing. I turned on the GPS at Pier 21 and as luck would have it we were about 10m away from a geocache so John and I started looking. John retrieved the container and we signed the log and then headed back to the hotel where we joined up with Amanda and headed off to the regional office to look after work part of the trip.

This morning (Tuesday), the other two had a meeting to attend so I took advantage to sleep in and then met up with them for lunch. Amanda had to fly back to Ottawa in the afternoon, so John and I wandered along the boardwalk before heading off to the regional office for a second monitoring session.

The weather here has been absolutely beautiful. Monday was about 22C and today it was probably 18C. The weather forecast is calling for a bit of rain overnight and maybe tomorrow, but I can’t really complain. I’m looking forward to my next visit to Halifax in a couple of months, even though it’ll probably be covered in snow and ice then.

At long last, some of the pictures from our trip to Hawaii are available online.  There are still some others that aren’t there, yet.

Earlier this month, Kathy and I went to Hawaii for 8 days. We stayed in Waikiki Beach in Honolulu on the island of Oahu. For the first half of the trip, we rented a Jeep and did a lot of sightseeing, including visiting the Dole Plantation, Hanauma Bay and driving most of the north shore of the island. We also climbed Diamond Head, a volcanic crater at the east end of Waikiki. For much of the 20th century, it was a military command post with fire battery control stations defending Honolulu.

We also did some geocaching and spent the last half of the trip on Waikiki beach in front of the Hale Koa hotel. Some of the highlights included going parasailing and taking a ride on one of the Atlantis submarines.

I took a fair number of pictures which I haven’t put online yet.