Fantastic flight and a Canadian Olympian

On Thursday 1 February 2007 it was time. Real Winter time. Real snow time. No more playing around in BC with temps of plus 8 degrees and fog and pretending that I was tough enough for Canadian winter. Was I ready?

After another pre-dawn start in Vancouver and a 2 hrs of groundhogging (circling) around the airport (saying to myself "look a bookshop!"- 2 mins later "look, a bookshop!") I was up and away on the big flight to Montreal. Thanks Air Canada. This time they got the food right and I was on one of the new spaceage planes with the DVD touchscreens in the back of the headrests. Brilliant !! I could watch cartoons, the news, 10 different types of movie, whatever. It was awesome.

I swapped seats with a lady so she and her adult daughter could sit together, which turned out great for me. I ended up chatting to Greg Stevenson, a nice and exceptionally tall fellow who was on his way to Montreal to visit his brother. It was not until several glasses of juice and 2 movies later that he modestly confessed (must have been the juice)that he had a previous career as a rower for the Canadian men's four Olympic rowing team for the 1992 and the 1996 games (where the Canadians came fourth). A really lovely bloke and I am still impressed, having never met a non- Australian Olympian before.

All this helped me from grinding my teeth into dust that the Asian girl sitting on the other side of me slept all the way against the window (closed) so I completely missed out on my one chance to see the entire country of Canada from the sky on a clear winter's day.

The plane was 1/2 hr late leaving from Vancouver, so upon arriving at Montreal I went straight to the desk and asked for my connection gate. I got a very languid response from the staff member in French so I thought I was on schedule. Not so. A minute later they were calling me by name over the PA system and I had to leg it to the other end of the airport. I was rushed through to a tiny plane on the tarmac. I nearly stopped dead from my run when I got outside, escorted by the Air Canada staff. Minus 12 degrees and me without coat or hat on. But more than that. The staffie told me to slow down as I was running on snow. I barely had time to absorb the shock as I was ushered onto the tiny white-knuckle to Quebec city.

Arrived Quebec city to find that my luggage had not followed me, which for the moment was fine by me because I had decided that I really had fallen out the back of the wardrobe into Narnia. For those of you not familiar with CS Lewis- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or my stunning performance as the child Susan in the play version in 1990 (Children's Theatre Workshop Wagga- haha) 4 English siblings are sent to the country during the London bombings in WWII. Lucy, the youngest, discovers a big wardrobe in one of the disused rooms and falls out the back of it into a completely different world of ice and snow called Narnia, torn out of space and time.

I had fallen out the back of wardrobe for real.