Day 18-19: More Fear From Flying

Day 18-19.  Still in
Banff.  Got up early enough to do a good aerobic and weight workout before breakfast.  Had some great hallway conversations before and between sessions.  I’m listening to a talk on cultural differences in using instant messaging.  The hypothesis being tested is that participants from “high context” cultures like
Singapore and
India will want to use more video and audio and emoticons than American and Canadian.  Different IM clients were popular in different places.  But more tellingly for the hypothesis, North Americans rated everything lower.  Indians tended to rate higher and Singaporeans were in the middle.  Doesn’t seem to be much difference to me about audio and video per se.  You see what you are looking for.  Well, don’t we all?

Anyway, last night we skipped the reception and worked till late at night whilst watching the election returns.  Awesome.  So, my interpretation of Rumsfeld’s resignation is that Bush is incapable of blaming himself for anything.  The Republicans lost big and largely on the war.  So…who could be at fault?  Not me, says Bush.  So, it must be…er….Rumsfeld, yeah, that’s it.  Anyhow. 

At lunch, we had a meeting about another conference to be held next year in
Florida in November.   It may be one of the last chances to see
Florida before it is underwater.  At least, that’s one attraction. 

Went out to dinner with some good friends at a fancy restaurant in
Banff.  Typically, I am one of the three of us who orders martinis before dinner.  I had Pellegrino instead and explained I wasn’t drinking any more alcoholic beverages.  Two of them ordered martinis and later the other three shared a bottle of wine.  I was fine with all of that, although I confess that on the way up to dinner, we passed by the “top” of the bar shelf on which were arrayed about four bottles of Grey Goose Vodka and I had the strangest momentary urge to reach out and snatch one!  After the bottle was gone, my friend ordered another half bottle to split with his wife and then had cognac for dessert.  This is pretty much exactly what I would have done a month ago.  And, I must say, that from one perspective this does not seem at all excessive.  And I guess it might not be if I only did this when I went out to a fancy dinner once a month or so.  But I was trying to “recreate” this same scene at home too. 

Day Nineteen.  We had to get up early in order to drive to
Calgary to catch our plane.  It took a little longer than we anticipated, mostly because the beginning of the trip was a bit icy.  Still, returning the car was a breeze compared with some places and we got to the airport basically on time.  I was called out for special screening once again because my name sort of matches one of the aliases of an already jailed terrorist, but aside from that our airport stay was fairly uneventful.  And — you guessed it — we sat on the tarmac.  At this point, Air
Canada was three for three flights being late.  Our layover in
Montreal was only an hour and a half.  Normally, this is a quite comfortable time slot.  In this case, however, returning Americans have to deplane, get their luggage, go through US immigration and through US Customs (yes, you read that correctly — we do this in Montreal, Canada) go through security AGAIN and then get to the gate of their departing flight.  In our case, we ended up getting to the gate in
Montreal 45 minutes late.  By the time we jumped all the hurdles mentioned above, we ended up running (oh, and did I mention, that I had to remove and re-lace my running shoes in security?) the last 250 yards with backpacks bouncing, suitcases in tow and a conference bag in hand.  My spouse had suffered headaches nearly every day in
Banff which she attributed to the altitude.  I had no such problems.  However, when we got to
Calgary, I did have a bad headache which got worse when we landed in
Montreal.  When I began to run, however, I realized that what I thought was a bad headache was merely a very MILD headache.  I really thought my head was about to explode as I neared the gate.  I suppose if it HAD literally exploded, I would have been ushered aside for extra security screening.  We had separate seats but my spouse gave me a sinus Tylenol as I passed by.  Thank goodness. Now, I could just get my bottled water and…oh, did I say “bottled water”?  What was I thinking?  Of course, when we went through security — AGAIN — we had to dump all our expensive and now useless bottled water.  I had probably the worst splitting headache I can remember — it was actually hard to see — but on the other hand, I felt a lot safer knowing that there were no terrorists on our flight.  Or, at least if there were terrorists, none of them were *jailed* terrorists with the same name as I have.  Or, at least if there were terrorists and they had all escaped from jail and they did all have my name as an alias, they would NOT be able to threaten to drown the entire crew with designer water.  Whew!  Did anyone see the movie the “Bourne Supremacy”?  This guy grabs a magazine and makes into a deadly weapon in about 300 milliseconds.  The airlines — I probably shouldn’t write this; I’ll just end up preventing Sudoku and crossword puzzles from making it on — the airlines not only allows you to take on a magazine, but in case you forgot one, it provides you with one.  In the case of Air
Canada, it looks to be roughly twice as hefty and sharp as the one Brad Pittbull used in the Bourne Supremacy to outfight a butcher knife.  So, my conclusion is, if butcher knives are not allowed on board…

Anyway, enough already.  We landed and drove home safely.  It was warm outside, even at 10:30 pm, or at least warm relative to the weather we left in
Banff.  The only “real” food I was able to “score” all day was at home.  On the plane, they have a menu  (37 items) on the back page of Air
Canada’s PDW (Provided Deadly Weapon).  They had already informed us that they didn’t have any “hot” items so that reduced the menu to 32 items.  So I ordered a Subway vegetarian sandwich.  Oops.  Unavailable.  Okay, I’ll take the chunky chicken salad.  Ah, we’re out of those.  Okay.  How about the bran muffin?  Nope, not available.  (Is this starting to remind you more of the Monte Python skit about the Scottish restaurant or the one about the cheese shop?).  Okay, just give me (finally!) some bottled water.  Ah, sorry, we’re all out of that.  Maybe it would be faster if you just told me what you do have. Yes, I actually did say that.