Sometimes it just doesn't pay to get out of bed in the morning. At least that's what pretty much the entire Lovett/Hammel family unit was feeling at the end of the day yesterday. We were supposed to catch a flight yesterday afternoon from Toronto to Minneapolis so that Morgen could spend her first Christmas with her Minnesota grandpa and grandma. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans.
The day started out like any other travel day for a family with a small infant. We spent the morning double checking our bags, adding a few more diapers, and stuffing Morgen with as much oatmeal and rice cereal as she could hold. After checking our flight status online, we bundled ourselves and the little one up, grabbed our bags and headed out the door. The snow was beginning to fall. We walked to the subway, and took the subway to the bus. By this point, the snow was getting serious, and traffic had slowed to a crawl. The bus crept up Highway 427 at about 30 km/h. About 40 minutes later we reached the airport.
We immediately checked our flight status on one of the nearby information screens. The flight was listed as on time, and we were relieved. We checked in at the Northwest desk, received our boarding passes and proceeded to the passport control area. The glass roof of Terminal 3 was beginning to fill up with drifting snow that formed an oddly beautiful stratigraphy overhead. We passed through passport control, watched our checked baggage disappear on the conveyor belt and headed to the security checkpoint, where we learned one of the advantages of traveling with a young child when the security agent waved us into the "priority" line. We went through the whole cumbersome security process, removing shoes as well as any insignificant piece of metal that we might have on our person and passing through the little security doorway into the airport's inner sanctum. We put our shoes and coats back on, our wallets back in our pockets, etc. The wind howled. Or at least that is what I imagine must have happened outside, for at that instant, I looked up and there it was in bright red flashing letters: "Annulé". It took me a second to realize what that meant. It dawned on me a split second before the screen shifted back to English: "Cancelled". Jessica and I looked at each other, sighed (there may have been a few other choice words uttered as well), and walked back through the security doorway to the sound of alarms and a cascade of red warning lights.
We went back to the glass-ceilinged reception area, where the snow was now threatening to blot out daylight completely. We asked at the Northwest counter what we should do now. The ever-so-helpful attendant told us that there was nothing she could do for us. We needed to call the customer service line ourselves to rebook our flight for another day. We could then pick up our bags at a nearby carousel and head home. As the snow continued to swirl, we spent the next hour alternating between trying (and failing) to get through to Northwest Customer Service, checking the baggage carousel, and keeping Morgen entertained/fed. Finally Jessica got through to an actual person on the phone and rescheduled our trip for Monday. No bags had appeared, so we hauled our increasingly tired baby to the airport Swiss Chalet, where we ate lunch. After paying our bill, we returned to the baggage carousel. Still no bags. The snow redoubled its pace. Jessica went in search of an explanation and returned with a Northwest representative, who eventually succeeded in having our bags sent up.
Bags once again in tow, we took the elevator down to the arrivals level, where we could catch the bus back to the subway. Upon reaching the lower level, Jessica and I looked out the window to our left. Through the driving snow, we could just make out the bright red and white of a TTC bus idling at the bus platform. It was approximately 150m away. Jessica, who had the baby strapped in front of her, told me to run and ask the bus driver to wait. After some hesitation, I ran, but it was too late. Covered in snow, I reached the road just as the bus doors were closing and the engine shifted into gear. I gestured to the bus driver to stop, but he threw up his arms and gave the international symbol for, "I would stop, but there's no room on the bus anyways." And he was right. The bus was completely packed. So Jessica, Morgen and I spent the next 45 minutes waiting in the glass bus shelter, an island of relative calm
amidst the dancing flakes, as more and more people crowded into it. Moisture from our collective breath began to condense and freeze on the glass, forming intricate webs of frost. Eventually, the bus came, and Jessica and I discovered another advantage of traveling with a small infant, as Jessica used our child to assure us a place on the quickly-filling bus.
The bus crept back down the 427 as the snow continued to fall. We took the subway back to our home station, and, disappointed to find that our local bus, which only runs every 30 minutes in good weather, was nowhere to be found, we resigned ourselves to our fate and began to walk the block and a half back to our apartment. Unfortunately, by this point the snow had become so deep that it was no longer possible to make use of the wheels on our suitcases. We would have to carry all three of them. Since Jessica still had Morgen strapped to her, I became the pack mule for the two heaviest suitcases. That still left Jessica, whose back was already aching from carrying the baby and a carry-on backpack filled with baby paraphernalia, to manage the other one. Fortunately, a good samaritan, a woman who lives up the road from us a little, offered to help. She carried Jessica's bag, as I struggled behind with the others, whose weight seemed to increase with each snow-filled step. Eventually, of course, we reached our apartment door, said thanks and goodbye to the good samaritan, and promptly collapsed on our couch. For a second, until we realized that it was time for Morgen's dinner.
