Suzy Says

We’re back, safe in body if not sound in mind (but were we ever?).

The series of planes, trains and automobiles required to get us from deeply rural Ontario to relatively* urban San Francisco were fraught with the usual annoyances and unpleasantnesses associated with any and all forms of public transit.

The train from Kingston to Toronto would have been great except for the guy sitting in front of me. He immediately jacked his seat back as far as it would go**, so I could admire the greasy lumps of what remained of his hair, and spent the entire time harassing the guy across the corridor from him. John figured the guy being harassed was some kind of minor Canadian sports-related celebrity (coach? reporter? actual player?) since John and the lunatic ahead of me had seen him on TV, and pretty much the only thing John won’t watch on TV is sports. We never did find out who Minor Celebrity was, but Lunatic was not only a lunatic but tanked and therefore far too voluble for normal human consumption. John said Lunatic also had a notebook full of bizarre writings with phrases of key weirdness highlighted, so we may have gotten off lucky with just boredom and annoyance.

The cab driver in Toronto who took us to the airport took us a very lengthy and stupid way, despite the fact that he was getting a flat fee. Surely he should have wanted to get rid of John, Bertha, and me as soon as possible to get another fare and make more money to help pay for the wear and tear Bertha caused on his shocks, but no. We meandered our way through the muggy grubby rush hour until getting to the airport hotel. Since I was still on my last few hours of being Vacation Suzy, I called Room Service on arrival and got some wine sent up to help banish the horrors du that particular jour. Oh, and food.

Our flight home was at the ungodly hour of 6:30 a.m., which is why we stayed at the airport hotel that night. The airlines require you to be there two hours – in this case, that meant arriving at the even more ungodly hour of 4:30 a.m. – before the flight, and we were. But they weren’t. So we got to stand there, sleep-deprived and bored, until one lone employee showed up, sometime after 5:00 a.m. She showed a remarkable ability to mess around with really important things, like lining up the barriers, instead of dealing with minor issues, like checking in the passengers. I’m telling you, every time I have had anything to do with the Toronto airport in the past decade has been bad news. But that’s another story.

Finally, we got checked in and went through U.S. Customs and Immigration with the greatest of joy. When we got to Security, our bags were searched thoroughly, though thankfully not Bertha, because I don’t know how/if we could have got everything back in. We repaired to the lounge to recover our frayed nerves, where I made the horrifying discovery that there was no alcohol served until 5 hours after our departure. The horror! The horror! Took two valium instead.

When we were boarding, they pulled me aside and searched my bags again. I must look deeply suspicious, or maybe they have heard stories about my bad behavior at their airport before. John had gone ahead holding Bertha’s hand and had a vodka & tonic waiting for me on the plane, but we spilled it while stowing the bags in the overhead bins and had to get another one. I think the flight attendants are still laughing.

In Chicago, we discovered that our seats were not together as originally booked. Flight was oversold and they were begging people to give up their seats in return for a prize, but forget it. We got on anyway and John convinced the guy sitting next to him to trade places with me, incomprehensible though this apparently was to the guy. It was a good thing, because we were delayed in Chicago for over an hour while they dealt with mechanical problems (!). Apparently, it was just something wrong with the internal lighting system and was in no way life-threatening (but would they tell you if it was?!). I took another valium and dozed through the boredom. If I had been alone I probably would have been having a total anxiety attack, despite all that valium. Finally, all was fixed, and it was the usual mix of boredom and bumpiness until we got home.

Now Vacation Suzy has to return to wherever she goes when she’s not being me, and I have to detox from all that de-stressing.

*Relative, that is, to the big city sprawl of Toronto.

**This happens to me every single time I am on a public conveyance that allows seats to be pushed back. I’m not kidding.