Hopefully not a sign of more bad things to come, my second weekend in Calgary started off with a cancelled flight. And of course this particular weekend I had plans with a tight connection after reaching O’Hare, plans that of course changed.

Hoping to make it to the annual reunion of the Wisconsin Marching Band I had carted my saxophone to Calgary at the beginning of the week and to the office and airport that day.

Since I knew I had only about 40 minutes to make the bus from O’Hare to Madison after landing I was carrying the sax on which meant I had to pack very lightly so that even with the sax I wouldn’t have to check any bags and given that this was a business trip I also had my computer. One way that I achieved this was to wear the shoes that I would need during the game on the flight thus making it unnecessary to pack any shoes as they take up a lot of space.

So after sitting through a delay due to malfunctioning restroom that turned into taking a 3+ hour flight without said restroom (and the associated mad dash to make one last pit stop before boarding) that turned into them not being able to pressurize the cabin that turned into a cancellation I headed back through Canadian customs (in Canada you clear US customs before boarding flights to the US) along with the rest of the fliers to find out how we were going to get to Chicago.

While it was a little chaotic, United did a good job of accommodating their most travelled and I wound up getting on a flight to LA that night connecting to a red-eye to Chicago. It wouldn’t get me to Madison in time for rehearsal, but it would get me home.

So I headed back through US customs (my third customs clearance in less than the same number of hours), and security (for the second time that night). Now, remember those shoes, well – they were aerobic shoes that meant that they tied – what a pain, one I had planned on dealing with once that night, and now I had to take them off and get them back on a second time. Normally I wear slip-ons when I fly to avoid that very hassle.

Upon getting to LAX I was quickly reminded about what I hate about that airport. The Air Canada gates are in terminal 1 and the United gates are in terminals 7&8 and these locations are at least half a mile apart. Plus you have to leave security to catch the bus between terminals. So, for the third time in one day I was going through security once again with those gym shoes.

Given the distance that I had to cover and the third pass through security, I was concerned that the upgrade I had gotten texted about during the flight from Calgary would be given to someone else, so I really needed to move fast to get to the gate and get my new boarding pass.  Not that it was a great upgrade given that it was a red-eye, as it was a 757 so just had the slightly bigger seats, that is there weren’t even footrests to get your legs up to sleep a bit more easily. Nevertheless, after some food and wine I was able to get a bit of sleep.

With mixed blessings, the flight actually arrived in Chicago early, so it might have been possible to make it to Madison if I had a car available and had not checked my sax. Now, that was not possible, especially since while I was able to cover half a mile at LAX and make my flight, my sax was not and would be delivered to me at home later that day. However, it did mean that I was able to get a little bit of quality sleep before taking advantage of being home unexpectedly and going to my French class.

Actually, I went to two classes for a total of 3.5 hours of French, which I had not been using much in Brazil and was a bit too tired to focus on. My reasoning was that between the time I registered and this, the first day of class they added a class that was closer to the level I needed. However, the school was not open when I discovered this so I could not change before the class I had signed up for and thus wound up going to both that day to see which was the better fit. In the end I wound up changing, which was nice as that class is at 11 while the other one was at 0 so I can go to the gym before class and get to at least one aerobics class per week.

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