Air Rage

Well here I am again. You would not believe what I returned to in Rankin and then camp itself. Wind and lots of it. Who would have guessed? It would only get worse as the night progressed, but I will get into that later.

I just love travelling. Waking up early, last minute packing, the ride in the taxi that smells worse than the Pacto I will be dealing with when I get to camp and then there is the airport itself.

What a day. First off was of course the obligatory travel headache generated the night before and then the crippling gas also a result of the same evening. Upon arriving at the airport the cabbie screwed up with the visa machine not once, twice or three times but the fourth time with a Master Card he managed to figure it out. I am checking my account on an hourly basis to be sure that I am not going to be charged all four times.

So then when I enter the domestic building it is over stuffed awith people and there seems to be more chaos than normal. Lines going every which way but not to a wicket of any kind. Then when I finally figure out the best way to deal with mess is to just point and shoot my way to the shortest actual check-in I am stuck behind the family of five with four bags each, no boarding passes and no intention of giving up their spot to someone-me- who does until wife/mom figures out how the express check in works. Then they have no picture ID for any of the kids over 16. More chaos ensues.

So the guy behind me asks. ”When’s your flight sir? Because mine’s in 15 minutes”

“9:00, sure go ahead.” So then the guy scans his boarding pass at a blocked-read don’t use me please- baggage tag scanner and procedes to crash the computer.” 15 minutes later, thankfully security was a cake walk, I am sitting down for a quick bite to eat.

Now my flight has been delayed from Edmonton. No big deal I got 40 spare minutes in Calgary. Well wouldn’t you know it 40 minutes late we finally begin to make our way to the taxiway. The flight itself was uneventful but of course something was bound to go wrong: “Ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the delay but we can’t shut down our left engine until we have auxiliary power and as a result we can’t disembark the plane until the engine is shut down. We have informed all connecting flights.”

So now I am waiting and I really got to have a leak…so when we are finally freed I find a toilet and just as I settle in “Paging Winnipeg bound passenger Deanoh, this is your final boarding call for flight…” Not exactly in a position to hurry things up I can only hope that the gate isn’t too far away. I do make it on board but there has been so little time between my last two flights I am convinced that there is no way on earth that my baggage will be joining me to Rankin this week let alone today. Not exactly a transportation hub.

So 5 hours later my third flight of the day arrives in Rankin Inlet and I am pleased to see that one of the camp helicopters is sitting on the apron. The first good news I have had all day. I won’t be spending the night in the Rankin at the crew house and as it turns out it would have been 3…but more on that in a second. The second bit of good news was that one of the cooks who was leaving for her break on the flight I just arrived on will be returning to feed us in two weeks. The third piece of good news: one Action Packer containing 48 ales, 40oz of fermented potato juice and warm clothes for the flight to camp circling on the baggage carousel! So I finally make it into camp and I am instantly dropped into camp guy mode. Can’t even get a good sleep before I get my hands good and dirty.

Batten down the hatches, cuz she is going to be a wild one, which was the word from Environment Canada. There was going to be at least 48 hours of crummy weather coming our way and this time they weren’t wrong. The tent shook all night long and then it rained like I was back on the North Shore in November and when I finally decided to pull the earplugs from my skull and get out of bed the next morning I had a hard time finding the kitchen because the visibility was next to nothing and would stay that way for the next 2 days. Kind of crummy for the guys stuck out at the drill as it was the second time in as many weeks. At least this time they decided to save the survival food for a survival occasion this time as apparently they had been using it previously as lunch until they did get stuck out for three days with nothing. Ha ha ha!! The graphic image for aviation showed an intense low with a band of clouds circling much the same way a hurricane would, the satellite image montage was equally impressive. The clouds finally broke but the wind picked up when front passed. As I type this out, there is still a wind warning posted for Rankin Inlet. I think I can deal with it…for now.