Collecting Akis

Akis didn't want to miss out on too many classes when coming home for the weekend and so we decided that he would fly in after me on the Thursday night red-eye. I took the time to go and visit Liz in Bayfield and spend some time with her. The plan was to spend the night at her place and then head down to London to collect Akis and come back home.

Akis, is not the best traveller when it comes to going somewhere he hasn't been before, or taking new modes of transportation, so I knew it wasn't good when Liz came into the room at 12:30 and said, there is something wrong with Akis' flights. I called Akis and learned that they were now planning on re-routing him through to Toronto instead. Turns out that the inbound plane from Kelowna had problems and would be delaying the flight to Calgary. This meant that anyone going to Calgary with a connection would need to make alternative arrangements. Akis spoke to the gate agent and his choices were, go to Calgary, miss the connection and fly on to London the next day or take the flight to Toronto and get in a cab with a voucher and drive to London. Neither was overly enjoyable, but we opted to have him go to Toronto and I would leave a bit earlier to pick him up.

As I got back into bed, did some mental arithmetic, I realized I only had 3.5 hours left to sleep and I had better be ready for a long day. Up at 4:30, I got my tea, got my stuff ready to head out to the car and then looked around and wondered hmmm, where did those keys get to. After a bit of searching, I found the hiding spot for them to keep them out of the hands of an 18 month old and then checked the internet for directions. I took everything out to the car and was on my way. 5:10, not bad. And then I had a moment where I thought, I have 1/4 a tank of gas, I should be able to get to Kitchener, but I better check to make sure I have my wallet. As I searched I realized it wasn't there and thought to myself, I wonder where that is. Yes, it was under the front seat of Liz's car from our walk on the beach the day before. So luckly I was only 5 blocks from their place, I returned and skillfully started to make my way into their car. Despite living in Bayfield, the doors were locked and as I entered and exited their house on multiple occassions in search of the keys and ultimately the remote to open the car, I was sure they would be getting up any moment and wondering if they were being robbed.

I was finally on my way and to be quite honest, I was surprised to see other cars on the road with me. I made it into Kitchener, and thought my Aunt Sharon would be glad that I did check for my wallet instead of needing to call her at 6:00am to borrow money for gas. I arrived at the airport about 30 minutes after the plane was suppose to have arrived and started the circle around Terminal 3. On the 4th loop and after confirming that the plane had landed 30 minutes ago, I decided to park as I suspected Akis of sitting inside waiting for me. As it turns out he was walking down the hall towards the escalator and I realize now how much easier life can be with cell phones...

We drove back to Dad's, stopping at Tim's for our morning meal. Insisting that Akis could not live on just Boston Cream donuts, we got an egg sandwich and back in the car we went. We approached Paisley and I mentioned that I was getting stiff and my back was a bit tired, Akis says to me, 'I thought you liked long road trips'... I think what he failed to remember was I had already spent 2.5hrs in the car before picking him up just getting to Toronto.

I think what made the whole situation funnier, was I had asked Akis to transport some Feta which we had bought in Vancouver. We had a couple of discussions about the Feta and if there would be problems bringing it and I assured him that he was not crossing borders so bringing the cheese would not cause a problem. I guess this assertion didn't take into consideration the fact that Akis decided to wrap it in tin foil. As he went through security, the guard asked if he could search Akis' bag for illegal drugs. Akis said sure and he went directly for the brick covered in foil ~ he was asked what he had, and responded this is feta cheese. It became a bit of a joke that the guys were searching for illegal cheese, so I guess the moral of the story is, don't wrap your brick like objects in foil.

Oh well, at least everyone, including the Feta got where they needed to be!