Swine What? and I heart Canada

I had a totally crazy trip this weekend. I checked in really early on Saturday morning to fly to San Francisco, then on to Vancouver. I was a little over-excited about it because we switched hotels in YVR and I have heard only the most fabulous things about the place. It's so awesome that I got a text from my friend Christen, who must have seen the trip in my line, asking me to get some extra shampoos from the housekeeper's cart. In our line of work, it's the simple things like in Vancouver where the hotel has rockin' amenities and is actually within the airport, which means: 1. No hotel van to wait for! and 2. No driver to tip when he takes your bags, therefore saving 2 dollars. Don't get me wrong, hotels within the airport aren't the best thing ever but when you have a relatively short layover all that hotel van time just eats away at sleep, which is about all I want to do after a long day of flying.

Our layover was supposed to be around 15 hours, which is my ideal length. It gives me just enough time to stop in to the gym, shower, eat, dry hair (which for me is a mega-project) and get plenty of the aforementioned sleep. I did my whole routine and yes, the room was FAB-U-LOUS. I remember sitting in the bathtub, which was about the size of Dad's hottub, watching Canadian TV (more on that in a minute) and thinking to myself, "wow, it's too bad we have to leave so early in the morning. I could definitely stand to take another bath in this lovely tub." And for the record, I'm not a huge bath person, this tub was just plain amazing.

Since I am an idiot and therefore jinxed my entire crew, of course the phone rings at midnight. I'm confused and think it's my wake up call until I look at the clock and realize I can't remember the last time I made it through an entire night at the hotel without a call from the crew desk. One of my favorite nighttime crew deskers (and I say that dripping with sarcasm), Sally, lets me know that our 6:30 a.m. flight cancelled and now we'll be working a 1 p.m. flight to San Francisco. In my incoherent state, I try to process this and do the math in my head and realize that instead of getting home at 12:30 that it will be no earlier than 10 p.m. now. Ug. Turns out we ended up home at 2:45 a.m. Hip hip horray for glorious Chicago weather. When it rains a drop, the whole airport goes insane. Two days later, I'm in way better spirits about it but at the time I was PISSED. On the brighter side, I had another really great workout (Wii fit says I'm down 3 lbs!) and got in another bath.

But back to the real reason for this post. I have a completely irrational love for Canadian TV. I can't decide if it's because all of the news anchors sound like Robin Scherbotsky from How I Met Your Mother when she gets all Canadian or if it's because I have an extra reliance on the TV to escape boredom in Canada since Sprint charges you for your first born child if you make calls while outside the country. Either way, I love the TV there. It's awesome. It makes me remember the days when international flying was actually a possibility for me. Even though in most Canadian cities you are within an hour of the border, it's still a foreign country and therefore bears a tiny bit of mystique. They also have BBC World, which makes me want to punch Comcast and RCN (our local cable companies) in the face for not carrying the channel.

Since I had all that extra time and I was in the airport so it's not like I had anywhere to go, I got my fill of swine flu coverage. I hadn't even heard about it before I got there. I'm hoping that I don't get assigned a Mexico City trip during all of this hysteria. In Chicago, it's just a turn anyway, meaning that you go down there and come back all in one day, which makes for a sickeningly long day compounded by the fact that you arrive at the international terminal and have to clear customs (unlike awesome Canada, where you get to do that before you leave). It's a barfy trip to start with and I want no part of face masks and sick peeps. I guess I'm lucky because I've never even had the regular flu so I have no idea what kind of suffering these infected people are dealing with. I hope that there continues to be no fatalities here in the U.S or else mass hysteria might break out. I'm not a believer in hand sanitizer to start with (there's nothing like good ole water and soap) but I saw on the news today that stores in Chicago are selling out of the stuff. Sure enough, I headed out on my almost-daily trip to our local Walgreens and some girl was all bent out of shape with the cashier because they were all out of the travel sized sanitizers. People crack me up. That chick is probably the same person who schedules a 30 minute connection and wants to yell at me about how far away the 2 gates are. Idiots.