Advertisement
Published: January 5th 2020
It is late December. We are about to start our 2020 travel adventures, and as we all know, traveling can be very stressful at times. Just days before we are set to depart, Mother Universe decides that we need a refresher course on controlling our emotions and anxieties, to prepare us for our journeys. And so it is that the roller coaster ride of emotions begins.
Six days before our December 31st departure we wake up to a cold house. The furnace had stopped working during the night. For those of you reading this from elsewhere in the world, we live in central Canada, in one of the coldest regions of the country, and this is our winter season. Worry and anxiety begin to take hold. A non functioning furnace is the worst nightmare to experience before departing on one’s travel adventures .? The furnace company is called. At precisely the same time that the door bell rings, I ask my lovely wife Beverly if she might have, by chance, turned the furnace switch off by mistake when entering the furnace room last evening. Upon checking, she confirms that she had indeed accidentally turned off the furnace. Since the furnace
man has already arrived, he checks to make sure everything is working properly, and we enjoy the first roller coaster ride which took us from the lows of frustration and worry, to the highs of happiness. Calmness returns to our little world.
Get ready for the second ride. Approximately three hours after the furnace ordeal is resolved, we receive a call from our airlines. Alarms bells immediately sound. Why are they calling? Has our flight been cancelled? Delayed? Connecting flight changed? Anxiety definitely begins to rear its head again.
Last August, when we purchased our tickets, we had placed ourselves on a waiting list to use our airmiles to upgrade our seats should any upgrades become available, and then we promptly forgot about it. I am inclined to believe the airline has maybe two air mile seat upgrades available, for which you must book a year in advance ? But after taking the December 23rd call from the airline, we discover that we have won that lottery! We could indeed upgrade our seats, and are now going to be flying from Vancouver to Taipei on New Year’s Eve in Business Class. How sweet is that? For all those
non believers, there really is a Santa Claus ?. And there is part two of the roller coaster ride, traveling from anxiety to complete happiness.
Fast forward a few days to our departure day. We are now getting ready to go to the airport, having been excited for days about the prospects of flying Business Class, and enjoying a champagne toast on our New Year’s Eve flight to Taipei. It just couldn’t get any better, as this is the first time in our lives that we are able to fly Business Class (and most likely the last time). And then it arrives, just one hour before we are set to depart for the airport. It is an email from, you guessed it - AIR CANADA, our connecting flight carrier - informing us that our flight from Regina to Vancouver has been delayed by three hours. There is now a very good possibility that we may miss our Vancouver connecting flight to Taipei.
It is impossible to contact Air Canada by phone, as they no longer take any calls, but phone calls are immediately made to EVA Air. The first is to EVA Air in Los Angeles, where an
agent tells us that we would indeed miss the connecting flight to Taipei, and the next available flight to Taipei is not for seven days, with Business class no longer available. Yes indeed panic is presenting itself, and another roller coaster ride begins.
After several more failed attempts to reach Air Canada, and another conversation with an EVA Air agent located in Vancouver, we are told we may be able to make our connecting flight, as long as there are no further delays. And then we calmly wait for several hours for our flight to arrive, hopefully with no further delays, to see how things will unfold. Everything is beyond our control. We have gotten much better at not jumping so quickly on the roller coaster ride. And it appears Mother Universe has been watching over us after all. We arrive in Vancouver and I have to say I haven’t walked that fast in the last year 20 years to get to the EVA Air departure gate. We arrive 15 minutes before scheduled boarding time. ??
Mother Universe must have been feeling bored and decided she needed to tease us before our journey began, and perhaps remind us
to trust her.
Did I say mention that we really really really really like flying Business Class? Our son doesn’t think it is such a good idea that we are getting spoiled, and travel soft, at our ages, but we are thinking he is mostly visualizing his inheritance money flying away. ?
Bangkok, our first stopover, is an amazing blend of sights and sounds, pulsating with life. It is always a perfect place from which to begin our adventures, like showing up at a buzzing party before moving to our ultimate destination: the stunningly beautiful and inspiring southern island of Koh Phangan.
Thank you for your interest in our travels.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.084s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0632s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Susan
non-member comment
Happy to hear your ups and downs ended UP up and away in first class. I don't believe I've ever splurged on it myself. Perhaps one of these days!