Business travel adventures in the Canadian winter I have two very different businesses that I run and have partnership in. 1) Blueberry guitars 2) Onyx and Blue/Onyx and Green eco-friendly Stationery I love them both and they take me on wild adventures all over the world. There is a third business that I am a partner in that I love less. I just returned from a three day Onyx sales trip in the West Coast - I got to my house at around 2am Wednesday morning. I fell asleep at around three am and decided not to set the alarm and to let my body take the sleep it needed, I was exhausted. I have a lot of work in front of me as in addition to following up a sales trip for Onyx we just finished a successful Blueberry guitar online auction and I had 30 new guitar customers all writing to me and calling me at the same time to discuss various things about their new Blueberries (when will it ship, how will it be setup, can they install a pickup etc). When a guitarist takes a risk and spends over $1,000 to buy a guitar online that they have not played, they are rightfully apprehensive and I always try to communicate and respond as quickly as possible to all inquiries but I was very pressed for time this week. I woke up Wednesday morning and looked at my watch, it was 5am but I was not sleepy, how strange - wide awake on two hours of sleep - I forced myself to go back to sleep, woke up a little later and looked at my watch again - 630am - it still did not make sense, I was not tired. I looked at my iPhone to check my emails - it said 930am!!! Like an idiot I forgot to change my wrist watch back to east coast time, so it was three hours behind - I hopped out of bed,showered, ate my regular non-sweetened oatmeal breakfast, packed my bags again for 5 days of travel again and drove to the office. I had an important meeting scheduled for this afternoon (Thursday) in Orlando Florida (Onyx business) - quite important, I am to make a presentation to a large American sales organization, one of the largest organizations in my industry, training the sales reps on how to present our product line to their hundreds of customers. Finding this organization and getting them to take on our line took me months of intense networking, nagging, and pestering the owners of the company but finally I succeeded, they are pleased to take us on and this is my one chance to meet all their sales people and motivate them to sell for us. It is their yearly sales meeting where their 25 key salespeople who live all over the USA get together in one place to plan strategy for the coming year - they spend a week in a snazzy hotel and have 30 minute meetings with all their vendors all week - my slot is at 130pm today - I need to make it count. So, my ticket was booked for a 5pm flight yesterday from Montreal to Toronto and transferring in Toronto to a flight directly to Orlando leaving at 845pm and arriving near midnight. Westjet I was supposed to check into a relatively cheap airport hotel in Orlando and get a good nights sleep, wake up this morning refreshed, and get to my meeting. HOWEVER By yesterday afternoon the snow in Montreal was coming down hard and I called my superstar travel agent Brigitte who told me that the Westjet 5pm to Toronto and all other Westjet flights to Toronto after 5pm were cancelled because of the storm but if I could get to the airport really quickly, the 4pm to Toronto was still going and she could get me on it. So I hightailed it to the airport and got on the 4pm to Toronto, hoping to catch my 845pm connection to Orlando. The 4pm to Toronto boarded at 5pm. I used the waiting time to respond to as many Blueberry auction times as possible in m laptop using the airport free wifi. As I stood in line to board I started talking to two Westjet flight attendants who were stranded and getting on our flight so that they could get home to Edmonton - they were supposed to be working on one of the cancelled flights but now they just a wanted to get home. We made a little friendly bet, they thought the flight would be in the air by 545pm but I told them in my experience during bad weather it would never be airborne before 615pm. The flight of course was packed - all the people they could fit on from the cancelled flights were on. No place for my hand luggage except by my feet as the overhead bins were all full -my knees were way up - no place to move. I had wanted an aisle seat but I didnt get one and now I was sandwiched between a heavy businessman and a young pretty Indian girl who was asleep when I got to my seat and stayed asleep for the whole ordeal. I was still wearing my winter coat as I squished into my seat. The snow was really coming down hard and the plane went to have the wings de-iced before it could take off. For my friends from the tropics, ice and snow forms on the wings of the plane when it snows or is really cold and this has to be removed with a powerful spray from a large truck and also scraped off before the plane takes off or it can jam the mechanisms and cause the plane to crash. Lots of weird noises of de-icing and then more weird noises as the plane lurched back and forth. At 545pm the captain made an announcement - our plane is stuck in the de-icing area, we are too heavy and the trucks that are supposed to tow us out of the area are slipping on the ice and cant pull us out - they are trying to solve the problem. 615pm after more lurching around the captain announced that they are bringing in the biggest tow truck in the airport to pull us out to the runway, he hopes it works because he has no other solution. It works - by 645pm we have been pulled close enough to the runway - the inside of the airplane is stifling hot and we are all sweating and having trouble breathing because there is no ventilation while we sit idle. The captain tries to start the engine - oh oh - it wont start, something about the ignition getting frozen - we need another truck to come and unfreeze the ignition - I suddenly realize that my flight to Orlando is now in jeopardy - the flight to Toronto takes an hour and unless we leave immediately I will miss the 845pm flight to Orlando I call super Brigitte at home and of course she is there to help me and we joke about this stupid situation. I am stuck on the plane, not sure if or when it will take off but we start to strategize. We assume that I will miss the flight to Orlando - the only way I can now make it to the meeting on time is to get a very early flight out of Toronto the next morning - luckily Air Canada has one leaving at 625am that arrives in Orlando at 935am - that would work. It costs an extra $365 - no choice but to go for it - will Westjet cover it? No way, not their fault there is a snowstorm, they can put me on a 1030am flight that arrives at 130pm at no cost, but then Id miss my meeting - I cant even reschedule the meeting for Friday because I have to fly further to the Caribbean tonight for more work tomorrow morning. Brigitte reserves the Air Canada flight for 620am and I take out my laptop and start watching some of the Walking Dead episodes I downloaded - I start at season five episode two strangers (they just got out of Terminus) Ive seen this one already of course but it is one of their better episodes. The captain makes another announcement - they solved the ignition problem but now we dont have enough fuel to get to Toronto so we need to also wait for a fuelling truck - 30 minutes. We are fuelled now but we have been waiting so long and it has been snowing so much that the plane needs to be de-iced again, so we head back to the de-icing area - lots of spraying and scraping noises - 30 minutes It is now 8pm and Brigitte tells me that my connection is officially missed. We are finally airborne - the first 20 minutes had some terrifying gut wrenching, life flashing in front of me style turbulence but then it smoothed out. Heavy businessman on the right and pretty Indian girl on the left slept right through it. I landed in non-snowy but very windy Toronto at 930pm last night. Westjet has a service desk equipped with four people who are there to inform us (everyone who missed their connections ) that they are absolutely not responsible for the weather and will do nothing at all financially to help us - so I am stuck covering the extra $365 ticket I had to buy, the missed prepaid Orlando hotel and even the Toronto hotel I would have to now find - after some badgering Westjet did give me a 25% discount for a hotel but it did not apply to the room I eventually found because I already got the AAA rate. Time to find a hotel near the airport and try to get some sleep. Brigitte tells me that the Best Western Plus near the airport has rooms for $84+tax and an airport shuttle to pick me up for free. Cool. I call the hotel and ask them to send a shuttle to the airport to pick me up - they told me they dont have a shuttle - confused and defeated regarding the shuttle, I head to the taxi stand - the airport is really close to the hotel but Toronto has a minimum taxi free from the airport of $21 - and the driver tells me it will cost $27 to get there, but I can save a few bucks if I get out of his taxi and walk 10 minutes (with my four suitcases and guitar in the hurricane like wind) to a different zone and find another taxi. I think he is just trying to get me out of his cab so that he can find someone who has further to travel. I am too tired for this. I call the Best Western again to get their address because this taxi driver seems to be missing a few screws and it turns out I was calling the wrong Best Western Hotel, the one I called was downtown - never mind, the driver knows the airport one and we get there just as their free airport shuttle pulls in. I check in at around 10:30p and ask about the shuttle going back to the airport to catch my 625am flight - well, it starts at 320am and runs every forty minutes - they suggest I get on the 320am shuttle. I go to my room - the toilet is broken and making stupid noises every two minutes - I ignore it. I go downstairs and buy a 12 inch sandwich at Subway next door that gives me heartburn all night. I go to my laptop and spend an hour and a half responding to Blueberry auction related emails and then turn off the laptop at 1130pm and try to get a solid three hours of sleep. I set my alarm for 240am and ask for a wake up call for the same time in case I sleep through my alarm. I cant sleep - the sandwich - and too many things going through my mind. I have an angry (but standard) email exchange with my ex at around 130am - there is so much bad blood and animosity over the years unfortunately that it doesnt take much to get the negative emails going. I hate myself for getting caught up in this. I finally fall asleep around 2am and wake up 30 minutes later, before the alarm and wake up call. Shower, go downstairs - it is snowing like mad now in Toronto, wonderful (its beginning to look a lot like.......@$&$*@!!!) I get on the shuttle bus along with about six other escapees and arrive at the airport around 4am and check in at the Air Canada Priority desk. I never fly business class unless I get upgraded, but I do get access to their priority lines because of my frequent traveling. USA customs does not open until 430am and there is already a big line. I forget that I am carrying dried fruits and nuts to snack on and I declare them and get pulled over and questioned but eventually I am allowed through. Go to the Air Canada business class lounge - I am Elite for life since I have traveled well over a million miles with them so I do have some perks, extra luggage allowance, priority lines,early boarding etc. Spend an hour working on the Blueberry auction results, finally making some headway and creating a spreadsheet for our luthiers who have to quickly set up, string and ship thirty guitars all over the world. Some firsts this time, new Blueberry customers in Hungary and Brazil as well as the usual Canada,USA,Australia and England. I have a coffee, a grapefruit juice with water and a bowl of dry musli for breakfast in the lounge as I work on my laptop. I get on the plane to Orlando at 6am - while on the runway I buy a Fido mobile phone travel package on my iPhone for USA for $40 - this allows me to text, use data and phone services at rates that only screw me on charges rather than viciously rape me if I did not buy the package. De-icing the plane again as it is now snowing like crazy. Plane is in the air at 715am - not bad. I start writing this endless story since I no longer have wifi in the air and I wonder if anyone will have the patience to read it - maybe I will read this myself one day many years from now to remember what my working life was like as I am hopefully sitting in a seniors luxury retirement resort in Thailand being given a sponge bath by several beautiful massage therapists. I am on Air Canada Rouge which is a new type of service gimmick they came up with - the flight attendants all wear red costumes and funny hats and red ties and the plane interior has streamlined colours and shades with red accents, red seat belts, pillows, curtains etc. and there is no audio or video in the seats - but they will rent you an iPad that has many movies loaded. They give me the iPad to use for free because of my Air Canada Elite status but they hold my drivers license as security in case I try to steal their iPad. Who the hell comes up with this? I slept like a baby for an hour on the plane and now we are landing - the captain says it it pretty cold in Orlando - 6 Celsius - who cares! I cant believe I made it. To be continued
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 14:44:39 +0000