Not so fast

Two days after my last post I'm still in New York City. Blame the weather, blame mad chinamen, blame whatever.. it's a mess.

So here's the story. I leave the office and head to LGA, stand in line, wait 20 mins for someone to validate my passport at the self serve booth (if you need validation from a member of staff it's not self serve in my opinion but I digress) and am given this message.

"You are attempting to check in too early, boarding passes can be printed no more than 24 hrs in advance"

A lot of wrangling and I see that my flight has been canceled. And that I'm on standby for a flight 26 hours hence. Which is pants as I have to leave Monday at 4am to get back to New York. The office swings into action and finds a 9.40 flight out of EWR. I get in a taxi and start to head there... only to find on my Blackberry that this flight too is canceled. I call Continental (the airline) and they confirm, but say that my ticket was held but not bought and that if I want to fly at all this weekend I have to throw $1000 at them right now. I crumble. I buy the ticket. Cancel Delta and get some of the money back and then head back into town to find a hotel (remember no hotels if it's a weather related delay)

So today I leave early, Get to the airport and find my flight delayed due to a late arriving incoming plane. 3 hrs later I'm onboard and happy to be heading home. We pull away from the gate and grind to a halt. Bad weather. But we're being re-routed and will be away soon. Then that route is canceled. We still the engines and wait an hour - happy to be 3rd in line.

The clouds start to part and the screaming starts. A Chinese man wants off the plane. he's had enough. He doesn't want to fly. He wants to go back to the gate. We turn around and head back. To take off against his will is legally kidnap. Cool. As we head back planes start moving. There's a gap in the storm and they all take off. We don't. We get to the gate and the Chinese man refuses to get off. Planes are moving. He wants to leave. They throw him off. His three sheepish looking kids are ushered to the door. He forbids them to leave. "Booooo" say the plane. "BOOOOOOOOO" says the sweet but deaf man next to me. A stand off, they they too are off. We refuel. We head back to the runway. We stop. The storm is back. We're no. 17 for take-off. We wait. For about 4 hrs. People cry. People faint. The deaf man next to me shout / whispers "YOU CAN SEE THAT ONE'S NIPPLES AND HER ASS... SHE MUST BE A STRIPPER... NOT ONE FOR MOTHER ANYWAY"

"We'll make it" say the cabin crew

"We won't" says the pilot and we head back to the gate. Deflated.

"I TELL YOU SHE'S A DANCER" yells my seat-mate. Fun.

Weather again means no hotels but I stand in line with the deflated few and wait to change my ticket. It takes hours. The guy behind the counter seems distracted by the stripper / dancer. He offers me 5pm tomorrow. I don't want to fly at 5pm tomorrow as I have to be back Monday at 6am. So I decide to change for mid-week, suck it up and head into town.

Walk into my fave hotel and tell the tale. Tearfully. They take pity and upgrade me to a suite. It's nice. And cheaper than where I've been.

I try to call home but Jude is out doing the things that I'd planned for us to be doing together. I have a friend in town and I'm not seeing him at all. Still mid-week.

I decide to check the flight times and see that it's booked in the past. For July not August. Old Nipple Tassels certainly has an effect on men. I call and change the ticket. For no charge. That's nice. Check the weather for mid-week, it looks good. Then I cry, a lot.

After that I call some friends, arrange some dates, sort through expenses (a lot of small bits of paper) and generally feel better. Work some too and manage to improve a brief and get into a position to start work tomorrow. More drained than a bride-groom to be at one of 'SHE'S A DANCER, WINK, WINK's - and now for some TV and bed.

Farewell NYC

My last morning in NYC and I have a 7am call. That means having to stay until the next flight out - which is at 5.40pm. Long delay for a short call but hey, it's with Singapore and that's a 12 hr time difference so c'est la vie.

Have a wife and some friends waiting for me at home, along with a kick-box, yoga retreat - which could be fun (or disastrous, I'm hoping the former) then a couple more weeks of flying around the globe before finally getting back to Quebec and real life.

Still it's all good and it's all money in the bank...

A blog from a plane

As I got onto my Delta flight today they gave me a 'free wi-fi' coupon

And guess what? It works

Another refuge gone, huh?

Delayed, on a plane, with a moron

And so the noise continues. And not just any noise. Not the gentle hum of the air against the aluminum tin into which we are crammed, or the drone of engines fighting for thrust. No; this noise is more penetrating, a bullet hole, an exposed nerve in sub zero temperatures. This is a cacophony of noise in the first person. A litany of “I” and “me” and “then I” and “it’s amazing that I”s that is as relentless as it is boastful. The pauses for breath are few but precious, counted in nanoseconds, a silence which his unfortunate row-mate feels compelled to fill with the “Wow’s” that are taken as ‘please continue, only with more volume, more self interest, less sense of other people being around and punchlines to each story that are identifiable as such only by your laughter and the shake of your swollen head.”

And in the moments that you’re not imagining pushing a spike through the soft part of his brain responsible for speech you’re wondering what life must be like for those around him, Because this man sees himself as a motivator, as a coach, as a shining example of how self belief can overcome any obstacle. To his kids he will be first a hero, then a bully, then a figure to be kept at a distance, before eventually becoming a story as short as it is tragic. “My dad? Yeah, he was an asshole.”

You see them, these guys. On touchlines everywhere. In shorts. Urging the kids on. And of course these days you see them on TV too. Most famously Survivor’s biggest planet of one ‘Coach’… men too caught up in the rhythm of their speech and the energy of their telling to notice the slight recoil or the open disbelief of their ‘audience’


Some make a fortune as ‘motivational speakers’ – telling those cursed with meekness and manners that the way to ‘get on in life’ is to blast right through it, picking up ‘pearls of wisdom’ as you go. But there’s never any real wisdom there. Because these guys are all about the reaction to a sound-bite. They live for a ‘that was deep’ reaction, not for moments that are deep. Skimming along on a a thin surface of polite strangers and people caught too deep in their web to disappear to a quieter space.

And much as you may want to hurt them. To point out their folly, to highlight the reactions of the people around them, you don’t. Because there’s no room in the conversation. And no hope of getting through. These are guys who don’t know things they believe them and their belief is unshakable. They’re the assholes that love the military but wouldn’t join it, that love their wives but wouldn’t say no to the hooker in the bar, who’ll give you a piece of their mind – even though they don’t seem to have much to spare.

And they’re always, always, seated behind me.

International de montgolfières de Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu

So the summer here starts to draw to an end with temperatures set to a gentle bake, skies that grow hazy at night with the sweat and fatigue of the people here and with the last of the big festivals all vying for attention.

Yesterday we had the choice of hot air ballooning (with music by Wyclef Jean) or an Italian Fest with lots of sports cars, pasta and music by someone other than Wyclef (why do I always say his name as though I'm Tom Jones?), the Gay Pride community day with music by Michel Dorion or Festiblues with music by old guys who have had lives as hard and wives as battered as their guitars.

Having watched a scarcely attended drag queen homage to the 80s (Tine Turner good, Cher bad, Pat Bennetar a revelation), been depressed enough having lived in Michigan and both having the desire to still fit in our clothes we decided to eschew gay community, pasta and old guys with rough lives and rougher hands and set off for the Balloon Festival - or International de montgolfières de Saint-Jean-sur-Richeli.

And what a good decision. More inflatables than an It's a Knockout Special, fat kids refusing to jump from the bungee platform as mom tried harder and harder to fake credible adoption papers, a wine tent with outdoor seating and 100 hot air balloons taking to the air with near silent majesty. Really cool.

I have five days away now - a meeting in NYC and one in Atlanta... with lots of tricky flights in between - and I'm going to miss being here. Especially as Jude is finally back, the dog is finally well and we have a friend coming to stay for the first time in close to two decades (this friend, not any friend)

Oh well - home by Friday, and then a few days off before I have to head for Brazil.