A Thin Layer of Stratosphere Between Epochs

Drying laundry on a balcony is the domestic toll booth where reality collects its due after a holiday. Stepping out of a pressurized aluminium cylinder and unpacking suspiciously heavy suitcases leaves the physical evidence of having briefly occupied Central America fluttering in the Lower Mainland breeze.

Eating pupusas in the shadow of San Salvador’s volcanoes at breakfast, passing through Houston by afternoon tea, and returning home in time to sleep in one's own bed is nothing short of miraculous. It took humanity several millennia of stubborn walking, horse-laming, and seasickness just to establish routes that modern travellers dismissively call a routine Wednesday with an ample connection.

Measuring a standard journey between London and New York in days rather than hours is astonishingly recent history. Until October 1958, when the commercial passenger jet age properly kicked down the door with the BOAC de Havilland Comet 4 and Pan Am’s Boeing 707, crossing that pond meant booking four to five solid days aboard an ocean liner like the Queen Mary. Even the early propeller planes of the 1940s and 50s turned the trip into a deafening, twelve to sixteen-hour endurance trial punctuated by refuelling stops in Newfoundland or Shannon. In 1957, ships still carried more transatlantic passengers than aircraft. By 1958, the sky won, and the concept of travel as an extended test of intestinal fortitude evaporated almost overnight.

When my international career kicked off in Kuwait in the early 1980s, jet travel had already become democratic enough to feel ordinary, yet the sheer audacity of it remains absurd. For roughly ninety-nine percent of human existence, moving across a continent required writing a will, saying tearful goodbyes to everyone ever met, and possibly dying of dysentery in a ditch. Today, Jay and I accumulate astronomical air miles, complain mildly about seat pitch or Houston tarmac delays, and return with a week’s worth of tropical cottons to peg out in the cool Canadian air. It is breathtaking hubris, really, but marvelous all the same.

The End of the Journey

We were first at our hotel buffet at 5:50 am.

Day 28 - Jay and I concluded our Moroccan journey on the tarmac in Casablanca with a textbook IT error. The airline swapped our aircraft but failed to transfer the seating manifest. This resulted in a two-hour delay and a fascinating display of administrative confusion. First, everyone waited an hour in the concourse while ground staff struggled with their screens. Eventually, those who had already boarded were forced to return to the terminal.

The captain came out to address the crowd during the initial wait. He bravely attempted to soothe the passengers but only spoke English; almost everyone else on the plane spoke French or Arabic. It was quite a choice in communication. The rest of the delay unfolded after the manual boarding system also failed. It is hard to believe the aviation system operated smoothly before the era of widespread IT networks.

Over the Atlantic two hours late out of Casablanca. 

This delay actually worked in our favor. We had a tedious four-hour layover scheduled in Montreal. The delay ate up that extra time, leaving us with a much better one-and-a-half hour connection. It was just enough time to collect our bags from the carousel and immediately hand them to a waiting attendant for security reasons. Going through the Montreal security check again was not a big deal.

A completely full flight from Montreal to Vancouver.  

The final, five-hour flight to Vancouver was packed. The transcontinental push is always an endurance test. However, it felt good knowing the two of us were finally heading to the West Coast.

Since we officially entered the country in Quebec, we sailed out of YVR after just a few minutes of waiting for our bags in the domestic section of the airport. Our Uber driver dropped us at our door in New Westminster at exactly 8:13 pm. Now the only things left of the trip are the new memories and a few loads of dirty laundry.

Live from YUL!

We departed YVR at 9:05 this morning, embarking on the first leg of our journey to Morocco with a connecting flight through Montreal. When global aviation authorities mandated three-letter identifiers in the 1930s, Canada took the path of least bureaucratic resistance by simply slapping a "Y" onto its existing two-letter railway and telegraph codes. The prefix originally stood for "Yes," pragmatically indicating that the airstrip possessed a functioning weather reporting station. It was delightfully lazy. The YUL designation follows this exact logic, appending the national "Y" to the area's former Royal Air Force radio beacon, which historically broadcasted as "UL."

Jay and I are currently waiting in Montreal for our 19:15 direct flight to Casablanca. We anticipate touching down in north Africa at approximately 7:15 AM tomorrow local time, navigating a five-hour time jump from this coast and a total eight-hour chronological displacement from home. Our first few days will be spent resetting our internal clocks at the Ibis City Centre Hotel. Jet lag seems a bit more pronounced as one ages. Tomorrow's entry should be drafted from the comfort of our room before we officially launch into our self-created circular tour of the country.

A Long Day as the End of Our Winter

Day 139 of Our Winter: We experienced a bit of a temporal violation.

Left the hotel in Japan - 9:40 am on Wednesday, March 18.

 

Got to Narita Airport in an Uber at 10:55 am on Wednesday, March 18.  Then, waited for our 2:00 pm departure to Taiwan.

Spent time in an airport lounge and at the gate waiting until Wednesday at 11:55 pm for our departure to Vancouver from the Taipei airport.  Actually, the plane pulled away from the gate at 12:13 am on Thursday, March 19.

Arrived at YVR one hour late at 8:30 pm on Wednesday, March 18.

Luggage was slow and we picked it up at around 9:20 pm on Wednesday, March 18.

Lastly, we took an Uber to New Westminster and arrived around 10:10 pm on Wednesday, March 18, 2026.

Everyone Can Fly Now

 

Day 092 of Our Winter:  We didn't fancy a 12-hour overnight train nor an equally long ride on a bus.  So we flew to Chiang Mai and today we returned to BKK the same way. 

Doing the trip in around an hour sounds like magic.  However, the truth of flying is different because one needs to get to and from the airport and spend lots of time checking in and going through security.  We took the low-cost carrier and didn't spring for the extra seat charges.  So, their computers ensured that the gang didn't have a chance to sit close by.  I'll be darned if I can be blackmailed to convenient seating just so the airline can sell 'normal' space for optionally inflated prices. 

 

Air Asia flights into BKK encounter the Bangkok afternoon system crunches.  We would have made it earlier than the estimated 4:00 pm arrival, except the airport was too full to take us on.  Our plane had to do several large loops to stall our arrival time.  We landed only 15 minutes late.

Even though I'm complaining, it was a whole lot easier to fly than going those 700 km either by bus or train.

On the Bangkok end, we got a pubic SUV taxi to get us and our luggage back to the Ramada D'Ma.  We were here for three days when we arrived in Thailand.  Our eight nights in Pattaya and Chiang Mai are finished now, so we're back until we fly back to Colombo.  We will do that on February 6th.

Tonight we went back to the Manel Lanka restaurant as it's right in the neighbhourhood.  We are quite tired considering we spent the majority of the day sitting.

DXB to CMB on EK648

Day 057 of Our Winter: We flew over Muscat, the north Indian Ocean, and across the bottom of India.  It is pretty much the straight shot from Dubai to Colombo airports.  We arranged for an easy flight back, at least on the Dubai end. EK648 leaves Dubai at 4:10 pm. 

The four of us had the last leisurely buffet breakfast at the iconic Riviera Hotel along the creek. I picked an Uber van to get us to the airport because we had five 23 kg bags and four 8 kg carry-ons. The seating was limousine style and it's only ten or fifteen minutes from the hotel area to DXB. 

Of course, Jay insisted we head there earlier than necessary. I'm never late for anything but I like arriving precisely at the allowable time. Jay has a habit of wanting to be places early. The partnership must work as this marks our 40th year of arriving at places and events together. What I am attempting to say is that we had plenty of extra time at the airport.

   

The fight was uneventful even if completely full. I ran a few questions through Anjith my personal AI thie morning. I did it to provide inforamtion to a friend in Vancouver who worked as a flight attendant at AA for years. Here is some information on the route we travelled in around four hours. I found some of the facts here interesting.

 

Jay and I had new ETA visa for Sri Lanka and of course Jay's sisters were returning home. We breezed through immigration. The bottleneck was in collecting the luggage. Dubai is a shopping mecca. Even our tickets allowed for 40 kg of free luggage per person. So, you can imagine the number of bags carried by nearly 400 passengers on a 777 300! It took nearly an hour before our checked bags finally arrived! 

Sri Lanka is 1 1/2 hours ahead of Dubai but that put the clocks here at nearly midnight by the time we got a new phone SIM and hired and airport taxi van. The inside of the airport is pretty organized, but once you hit the front door with three or four international planes full of passengers, things get pretty complicated and quickly! Our drive got us home quickly.

A neighbor lady fed the house cat when we were away but the resident feline was surely not pleased we left her and let us know it! We got to bed late and I have a little cough now!

My Journal's on Autopilot Today!

[THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN PUBLISHED AUTOMATICALLY.] 

We really didn't have a Friday. If all goes according to plan, we departed at 8:05 pm from Vancouver. It should take around 12 hours to get to Istanbul, Türkiye. Meaning we'll land at 6:05 pm local time on Friday. So our Friday will be just the hour and a half spent at IST. Hopefully, we will board our flight to Colombo at 7:35 pm. It should take just a few minutes over 8 hours from Istanbul. TK 730 is scheduled to land in Sri Lanka at 6:10 am on Saturday, November 1st. 

These times are subject to change. I hope I don't see this small character clinging to a wing on any portion of these flights. I generated this a while back with AI.

 

Leisurely Departure Day

This is how our day started with a view looking south, southeast over the Fraser River. It was a bit of an unusual sunrise as captured from the balcony.

 

I've checked the Turkish Airways flight from Istanbul.  It is on its way to pick us up.  We will be aboard TK 75 as it returns home as TK 76.  As sunset in Vancouver is 5:53 tonight, we should be headed through security at the airport at about the time of sunset.

Our flight is supposed to depart at 8:05 pm and that appears very possible as the plane heading this way is about a half hour ahead of schedule at present.  However, it's only between Norway and Greenland now.

Delayed Departure

These were our original flights to Spain.

 

We should be in Montreal because it's 12:44 pm in Vancouver. However, I know the Vancouver time as I'm still sitting on the couch in our apartment. As soon as we got up at 5:00 am this morning, my phone already had an email from YVR, the airport, that our flights had been cancelled in the night. Jay logged on to the computer and had around ten messages all relating to our cancellation and rerouting. 

We have been rebooked on Vancouver to London flights and then, hopefully, will have two hours to get from terminal 2 to terminal 5. Our flight from there to Barcelona puts us in at 6:30 pm on Wednesday rather than in the morning as was originally scheduled. We will have less time to walk Las Ramblas in the evening for sure. 

Jay and I cannot board the MSC Orchestra for our cruise until 1:00 pm on Thursday, so I guess after breakfast that morning, we can have a few hours to mingle with the tourists on Barcelona's main pedestrian boulevard before checking out of Hotel Rialto. 

I'm sure it is not just the cynicism of age when I remember how flying used to be fun. We now plan to head to the Vancouver airport at around 4:00 pm to get on AC 860 at 8:00 pm local time.

One of Those Really L - O - N - G Days!

Day 31

A Day of Departure

Day 125:  We spent our last hours in South Africa at the hotel today.  We had to repack a bit. Everything we've been carrying since November of last year are in two, full-size suitcases and two backpacks as carry-on. The Holiday Inn @ Rosebank let us stay until 2:00 pm gratis although they usually like guests to leave by 11:00 am.  They consider this a late check-out.

Our flight from Johannesburg leaves at 7:10 pm.  We will fly for eleven and a half hours to Paris on Air France. We have to wait around four hours before boarding another Air France that flies to Vancouver directly.  The second flight is scheduled to last around ten hours.  So, we should arrive pretty exhausted in British Columbia around noon on Sunday. This schedule is subject to change without notice, but I hope not by much!

Tomorrow's journal entry should be published from the comfort of our apartment in New Westminster!  So this is expected to be the 125th and final with the topic label: Winter 2024-25.

From a Large Island to a Small One

Day 029: We had a relatively easy trip from Madagascar to Mauritius. Still, we arrived tired.

   

We didn't have to rush to get up. We enjoyed our final Corbert Hotel's great breakfast buffet. Packing seemed a bit of a routine due to our recent trip across Madagascar. We arranged for a taxi to take us to the airport at 1:00 pm. We checked out early at around noon and spent our final hour lounging in the lobby watching conference delegation members and new folks arrive at the hotel reception. It usually takes an hour to get to the Antananarivo airport from the city center. We got there a little faster and were able to check right in although our flight was scheduled to depart at 5:00 pm. We had lunch at the airport restaurant. The airport was nice, clean, and air conditioned.

   

Our Air Mauritius flight left exactly on time. It was a large new Airbus 330-900 neo. It was code shared with Emirates and we noticed an Emirates plane when landing. Some folks on our plane most probably transferred onwards. We disembarked with lots of visitor and foreign workers. It seems that Mauritius doesn't have enough workers to fill current jobs. They are inviting labor from poorer countries in the region including Nepal and Bangladesh. We had to wait a half hour to get through customs as they weren't well staffed either! 

Our Airbnb had a suggested taxi driver. We'd communicated by Whatapp before our arrival and he was waiting for us to exit the airport. It was further to come to Flic en Flac than I'd imagined. We got to the apartment at 10:00 pm! We weren't hungry because the short flight had a snack that was like a meal. We had cookies and cashews as a bedtime snack. 

This will be our home for close to one month. We should have sufficient time to explore this island!

In the Sky Again

Day 020:  We had to get up at 6:00 am.  However, we had no trouble catching our flights today.  First, we got on Kenya Airways to Nairobi.  That is not the way we were headed but it was the best way to get to our destination.

After one hour north, and a wait of an additional hour, we headed south east to Antananarivo, Madagascar.  The second flight took a bit over three hours putting us scrambling through immigration and collecting luggage at approximately 4:30 pm.

So it surely seems like a complete day of flying, especially as it took over an hour to Hotel Colbert in the downtown.

We will see what we can cobble together in the way of a tour as we have nine more days before we head on to an Airbnb in Mauritius.

Flying: Day 2

We flew for close to 13 hours to get to Dubai. By the time we landed here, it was nearly 8:00 pm local time.  (We missed most of the day.) We breezed through immigration. The automatic gates recognized me but Jay had a new, replacement passport and had to have a person process him through. We had to wait for a bit for the luggage.

We grabbed an airport taxi and checked into the Hyatt Place Al Wasl District. Our original reservations were for the Hyatt Place Al Baniyas Square, but a major fire occurred there last weekend! The place burnt and our stay was changed to this one. It is only about a 15 minute walk away. Little sleep in the uncomfortable airplane seat, so we're ready to sleep despite the drastic time-zone changes!

Jay managed to log on and change the seating for his two sisters and a family friend.  Now, they will all be seated together.  They're coming from Sri Lanka to join us on Tuesday.

 

Flying: Day 1

We called an Uber at around 8:30 am to bring us to the Vancouver airport. We had to take a flight to Toronto to catch our direct to Dubai flight from there. When we purchased tickets, they were direct from Vancouver, but Air Canada changed us a few months ago.

It took about 4 hours to get to Toronto and we had to wait about two hours for our next flight. We left a about ten minutes late at 9:20 pm.

 

Two and a Half Hours North by Northwest

Today we headed home. However, as we'd chosen a direct, Air Canada return flight, we had plenty of time. Las Vegas is open twenty-four hours a day but who wants to get up early while there? Jay went to get our coffee and croissants from the shop at the foot of the elevators at about 9:00 am.  After that, as we didn't have to check out until noon, we rode the free tram out to Mandalay Bay and walked though inside corridors to the Luxor. It felt right to walk though casinos during our final hours in Sin City. We officially checked out at the front desk early.

We continued by having a lunch inside the Excalibur up in the food court. We didn't hit a single buffet on this trip although that used to be a major attraction for me here. (Damn, my Ozempic for being able to so completely kill my gluttonous instincts.) 

We clicked for an Uber pickup by the designated exit at around 1:45 pm which allowed us to get to the airport for leisurely pre-boarding procedures. It all was smooth and when there's no stress, life is better. I enjoyed our short chat with our driver who drove a huge GMC and had lived in Vegas for 16 years.  Terminal 3 seems large and relatively new.  Slots still sit near the gates in LAS in case gamblers are trying to leave the city with a bit of remaining cash.  Our plane arrived early and we boarded quickly using the new facial boarding gates.  The flight left before its scheduled 5:05 departure time and arrived at YVR early too.  I had my free, tiny bottle of red wine on the way.

   

In our home airport, we walked and walked from our arrival gate to get to the customs machines.  Jay and I decided to do an Uber from the airport and opened our apartment door at 8:50 pm.  

The other day a guy in an elevator at Excalibur asked if we were up or down.  I said we were going up in elevators that only went to floors 20 to 28.  He was really asking if we were winning or losing in the casinos.  Neither Jay nor I enjoy gambling.  We didn't use the machines above.  However, on his birthday, Jay did put in a dollar bill into a slot machine in our hotel casino.  On a 1¢ machine that meant he got two spins.  He didn't walk away empty handed.  Even after giving the establishment 90¢, it felt like he left a winner!

Our Home for Four Nights

Weeeeee're back!  Getting down here was not much of an effort.  We didn't have to get to the airport until around noon.  We rode Bus #100 from the 22nd station to Marine Drive Station and got the Canada Line to the airport.  That took a little over an hour.

We got on our 2:20 United flight to San Francisco and got in a bit early.  We could have made the next United flight to Vegas but we had booked a later 7:00 pm flight.  Waiting in SF was easy and nice.  In fact, flying today felt like the old days when doing so was enjoyable. The schedules were stress free.  The staff were friendly and gracious.  The airplanes were clean and efficient.  There was little waiting or unpleasantness.  Our second flight left a little late but we made up most of the time.  As I remembered, we saw slot machines right at the gates in LAS.

It's almost better to get into Vegas after dark as one can see the strip in all it's electrified glory.  We decided to take Uber and although the airport made that a bit of a hike to the pickup location, it was effortless too.  So we got to the Excalibur Hotel around 9:30, I think.

We had a lovely agent when checking in and she noticed that Jay's birthday is on Sunday.  I mentioned something about making sure we got to see the Tournament of the Kings dinner theatre.  As it is in this hotel, she ensured it will be compensated as long as we charged it to our hotel room.  The weekend performances are around $80 each, so that was a very nice surprise!

We had a late Chinese dinner in the hotel and went walking this end of the strip.  

This is our view from room #27143.  We went to bed tired at about 12:30 am.  We're in Vegas, baby!

The Sun Never Set on Our Trip Home

Our taxi left the Monte Kristo Hotel in Riga, Latvia at 5:45 am.

   

The boarding of our 2-hour Air Baltic flight to Germany occurred 7:40 am.

 

We had to wait more than five hours in crowded Terminal 2 after flying into Terminal 1.

   

Our Condor flight left this gate a half hour late and travelled over the middle of Greenland on a direct line home.

 

We arrived tired at YVR at 4:00 pm and were at home at exactly 6:00 pm.

Beach Umbrellas by the Sea?

This is a jet that's currently over Iceland on its way to Vancouver. We will be flying on Condor DE2455 to Frankfurt late this afternoon. Then, we'll connect with a one-hour Lufthansa flight to Berlin.

  Photo linked to Flickr photographer, Juliett Romeo Papa (Juan Rodríguez) 

Condor calls itself Germany's most popular leisure airline. It started flying in the 1950s and was once a subsidiary of Lufthansa. It was acquired by Thomas Cook, but they went bankrupt in 2019.  The airline is now owned and run by a German investment company. The livery (an airplane paint job) reflects the atmosphere of its leisure-bound summer destinations with the striped motif in yellow, red, blue, beige, or green.  The one that is serving us today is blue.

My Last Entry this Winter from Sri Lanka

Day 137 - I'm writing this before noon on Sunday. We will head to the airport at around 4:00 pm. (The airport is only about 20 minutes from the house.)

  A picture of CMB International Airport taken during a previous trip.

I've mentioned the following quite a few times over the last few weeks. Sorry to bore you if you read regularly. 

We have a 4-hour and 30-minute scheduled flight into Dubai on Sri Lankan Air. We have to wait approximately four hours there for a 2:00 am departure on an Air Canada plane. It is a direct flight to Vancouver and lasts 15 hours and 50 minutes. That should put us into Vancouver a little before 7:00 am on Monday. 

Today promised to be a long one!