Day 1 (Mar 20, 2022) - On the Road...Finally

The day started early, when at 4:30 AM, an article about me appeared in the Observer (hurrah! So cool!), one of the major UK papers. Almost immediately, messages from readers started to appear. I had forgotten to turn off the phone, and once I was up, I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I knew it was going to be a long, exhausting travel day.

 

A large part of touring is dealing with various disasters challenges, big and small, that arise along the way. And before I even left Edmonton, they had already begun.
My routing had originally been Edmonton to Calgary to London, with a brief stopover between flights. A couple of weeks ago, the first flight had been cancelled and I’d been rebooked on the only other flight, which gave me an 8-hour stopover in Calgary, a city that was just THREE HOURS DRIVE away.

 

But okay, just a minor glitch. There were options. I looked into renting a car for the day, possibly even going skiing. I looked into booking a day rate at the airport hotel, or to pay to use the airport lounge for a few hours, just to break up the stopover. Turns out I needn’t have worried, since the flight out of Edmonton was delayed three hours, and by the time I landed in Calgary, it was too late to do much of anything. Oh, there was still a long stopover, but not enough time, really, to leave the airport. And the executive lounge was full.

 

But okay, just another minor glitch. I got a snack, settled into the terminal, and had a lovely telephone call… with a celebrity. Yes, an actual television star read my Deanna Durbin book, and she’s writing a blurb for me to include in the book. And she was just lovely. We had lovely chat, and after talking for an hour, there wasn’t actually that much time left before boarding. And as the sun set over the Rocky Mountains, the plane took off, for my first overseas flight since Covid.

 

The flight itself was all right. There was a couple beside me, and it’s always a pain sitting beside a couple. They take up a lot of space, and the girlfriend in the middle kept looking at me whenever she wanted to get out of her seat – apparently, she’d rather I move than interrupt the movie her boyfriend was watching. But also, I’m pretty good at pretending not to notice that sort of thing, so it wasn’t so bad. And they actually served food.

 

By the time the plane arrived, I was tired and grubby and had been wearing a mask nonstop for twenty-one hours. But I was in LONDON, it was a beautiful, warm day, and I was ready for adventure. Finally!