Toronto trip so far

So I had an AUS-DFW-ATL-YYZ trip to Toronto today, scheduled as follows:

AUS-DFW: 8:50AM-9:50AM
DFW-ATL: 10:50-2:00PM
ATL-YYZ: 2:35PM-4:44PM

so I prudently arrived at the AUS gate 13 an hour early to avoid any problems and to make sure I got on my plane.

But it was maybe a little bit TOO early. Having decided to stay awake the whole night before, I totally fell asleep 2m away from the gate (seriously, I was on the closest seat beside it), and woke up suddenly at 8:52AM - no waiting passengers around, no plane outside the window, the LCD sign over the gate saying DEPARTED.

Panicked, I asked a guy close to me who seemed to work at the airport whether he had seen that plane leave. He said he didn't know, but told me to go check with the airline counter. I did, and indeed, the flight had left... they gave me a stand-by pass for a later AUS-DFW flight leaving at 9:50AM, arriving in DFW at 10:50AM. I was hoping that maybe if the pilot was in a hurry and there were no plane traffic delays at the destination, the plane would still arrive 10-15 minutes early and would still give me enough time to exit the plane at DFW, and run at supersonic speed through the airport hallways to still catch my DFW-ATL flight at 10:50AM.

This time I did catch my 9:50AM flight. And sure enough, the plane arrived early. It was about 10:43AM when I woke up, and the plane gate had just opened, and other passengers around me were all bustling around, grabbing bags, and eagerly standing in front of their seats, as if it would get them out of the plane any earlier.

I pseudo-ran out of the walkway into the terminal, desperately looked for a flight status screen, found it, and found my flight in the list of departures. It said it left from gate E14. I looked around - I was on terminal A. I asked an airport information guy whether he could call my DELTA gate and tell them to wait 5-10 more minutes for me. He said he couldn't help me, so I ran. Man, I ran. I think I ran at least 1/4 mile before reaching the train connecting the airport terminals. Luckily, the train arrived about seconds later, so I got in. My speed now subject to the train speed, I tried to relax and convince myself that being stressed out would not make me get to the gate any faster. It wasn't easy, especially as I looked out the train windows and saw a DELTA plane roll on the runway, already departing. It was then 10:53AM. I wished for my flight to be shortly delayed by about 10 minutes or so.

Once the train doors opened again, I was the first one out of there, running again at the highest speed I could manage with two unbalanced backpacks hanging on me and a right ankle recovering from a sprain. Gate E14 just so happened to be the second-to-last farthest gate away from the train. That didn't make much of a difference anyway... when I got there, no passengers were waiting there anymore, and the screen at the gate displayed information about a 1:10PM flight to Atlanta - not my flight at all.

Having failed to catch my plane, I walked out to the airline counters and, again, asked to be re-booked. I felt very lucky when they simply told me that I would be able to get to YYZ at 7:48PM instead of 4:44PM - I was almost expecting to hear something like "as this was not the airline's responsibility, you will have to pay a fee of no less than $300 and be rebooked for tomorrow's flight to Toronto at 8:00AM" or something. But no! The comprehensive airline lady at the counter simply gave me two new later boarding passes on the same route as before, and told me "have a nice day" or something like that. I did likewise.

And then I sat down and started writing this blog entry on one of the seats near gate E14 at the DFW airport. I did not manage to finish it though... I had to hastily pack the laptop, its power cable, and my green ethernet cable back into my backpack a few minutes before my flight finished boarding. I was one of the last people on the boarding line. As such, I got a little scared when the gate entrance machine scanned my boarding pass and issued a warning red light and a cacophonic beep instead of the usual green light and friendly beep. I had to go stand at another line and wait for them to give me another boarding pass with a different seat number so that I could AGAIN go into the original boarding line and have my boarding pass accepted by the picky gate entrance machine ("Whew", I thought). I observed that many passengers were having some seat conflicts between each other - they didn't seem to know exactly which one their seat was. It seemed that the airline had reshuffled some of the passengers' seats just before the flight took up. I didn't care much... and as the plane took off I dozed off...

And woke back up in Atlanta. My layover in Atlanta was characterized by being long (around 2.5 hours), by having no Internet access, and by a blond, somewhat-older (mid 50s (both age and birth year)) lady from Kansas sitting down next to me at gate A33 and talking to me the whole time. She talked a lot - asked me where I was from, told me where she was from, told me she was going to Valdosta, GA, told me that she believed in physically punishing children when they did something "wrong", talked to me about a church which she claimed was made up of more than 42,000 people, told me she did not know too much about computers, and initially made me uncomfortable by striking up topics in the conversation in which I had little interest in. I did agree very much on something she said, though - she said that it was nice to find someone who agreed to just sit down and talk for a while, that it was becoming harder and harder to just talk with random people in any place. She said that was due to many people always wanting more money, nicer cars, bigger houses, and being stressed out all the time due to that. She said that when people do that, they don't own their possessions - their possessions own them. That they become slaves to their own possessions, always wanting more, always struggling to keep everything they have and to get more and more and more. I heartily agreed.

As my ATL-YYZ flight finished boarding and I got in at the end of the line, I said goodbye to the old blond lady from Kansas who helped me make my waiting time at the gate a little less boring. She wished me luck and success in my future plans, I wished her the same, and I boarded my plane. A little over two hours later, I woke up in Toronto, presumably at around 7:40PM (EDT).

So then I deplaned directly onto the airport runway, got into a bus which drove me and the other passengers to a building that said "Customs", I got in line to present my immigration papers to the Canadian Immigration Inquisitors, and then I was forced out of the general exit path onto another line, in which a nice-looking girl with full CII uniform revised my passport and green card and asked me very detailed questions about where was I from, where did I work, how did I get the green card, why was I coming to Toronto, who my friend in Toronto was, what was he doing here, what was it like in Guatemala, and told me that she herself had thought of going to visit Guatemala sometime in a tour trip. I told her pretty much the same I tell other people who want to go to Guatemala - that it's a nice place to visit, that Panajachel is awesome, but told her to be mindful that it's not a non-dangerous place (crime-wise). I told her it would be easier for her to blend in with the population because she looked almost Guatemalan - she told me she was ethnically Portuguese, I told her I was going there for the summer, and she recommended me doing the Spain-Portugal-Morocco tour - said Morocco had some beautiful places to visit.

I had the impulse but not the guts (or naiveness) to ask for her phone number so we could get together while I was in Toronto. So then she just gave me back my documentation (passport and green card) and told me I was free to go. I then walked to the baggage claim area and saw an exchange rate booth. I took up the $2 I had in my wallet and exchanged it for canadian dollars (CAD$2.24), thinking it would help me to get on the train to downtown Toronto. She said it wasn't enough for the train, but I told her it was all I had and that I would get some more money from an ATM.

Having no bags to claim from the baggage claim area, I walked outside and looked for an ATM. I found one easily enough. Put my card in, punched my PIN in, asked for CAD$80, and a receipt came out saying "Invalid Transaction". I was puzzled. I tried again. Same result. I tried to get the cash from my Credit Card instead of from my Savings account. Same result. I looked for another ATM and tried the same. Same results. I took out my phone to call Marcelo to tell him I had landed and what was happening to me. My phone showed no reception whatsoever.

So I evaluated my situation. I was alone in Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ), with two banking cards that apparently did not work in Toronto, CAD$2.24 cash in total (not enough for a public transport fare), around 30km away from my destination, and a phone with no reception. It didn't seem right. So I thought the problem about my cards might be that I was not in the USA anymore, and that I should've told my bank I was travelling to Canada. Luckily for me, my banking cards had 1-800 numbers on the back. Also luckily for me, those numbers were free for me from public payphones in the airport. So I called the 1-800 number, dialed a few tones to tell the system I wanted to speak with a bank representative, listened to classical music for about 5 minutes, told the bank representative my problem, he told me my debit card was not linked to my savings account, I had him transfer some money from my savings account to my checking account, he set the restrictions on my card so I could use it in Canada, I thanked him, and then he transferred me to some sort of ATM protection association so that I could remove the same restriction on my card with them. I then listened to classical music for at least 10 minutes while I was being transferred, I then told the lady my same problem, she configured my card in the same way, she put me on hold so she could verify that the restriction was properly lifted, had me wait on the phone for (I PROMISE it felt like at least!) 15 minutes this time, and then she finally told me "OK, you're good to go". I thanked her, she wished me a good night, and I finally hung the sweaty, greasy public phone earpiece up. By that time it was almost 9:20PM.

THEN I was able to withdraw CAD$80 from my checking account. Then I thought of taking the bus to downtown Toronto, but I had a hard time finding it, and I saw an Enterprise shuttle just across the street from me, so I decided I felt not-so-frugal that day and that I would just go ahead and take my reservation a day early (I mistakingly made a car rental reservation to pick up one day AFTER I arrived in Toronto). I managed to convince the shuttle driver that I indeed had a reservation with Enterprise, he allowed me in the shuttle, he took me to the Enterprise office, and I rented a red Economy Hyundai Accent car for 7 days for like CAD$271 (without insurance). Marcelo says it was a good deal. I thought it was quite a ripoff compared to the circa-CAD$185 I had originally gotten for 6 days from the Priceline site, but oh well... it was my own fault.

Then I drove down south and then east on the Toronto freeways until I reached downtown. I found the hotel pretty easily, parked in front, found Marcelo having dinner at the hotel restaurant, asked about hotel parking details (CAD$20 a night) at the lobby, and then went out to drive the car around downtown Toronto. I liked it very much. We then got back to the room and went to sleep, each in his own comfy 3-star hotel bed.

We woke up at around 7:20AM, he got ready for work, I responded to a lot of emails, then we walked down to the building where we works. I bought a banana muffin and a medium coffee for CAD$1.99, he did the same, and then he left to go to work. It was then around 9:00AM. I then looked around - I was in a public underground shopping area, very clean and very business-like-looking, with signs around that said how to get to Union Station. So I ate my banana muffin and drank my coffee, and began walking around to observe some canadian commerces at work. I bought a chocolate milk at a nearby market shop, I bought some kraft paper and a box of 8 crayons at a nearby computer/bookstore shop, and I browsed around some expensive tech-related shops, looking for interesting gadgets or for very cheap prepaid phones. I found none.

I drank my chocolate milk, walked on to Union Station, found no maps of the rail system I could take with me, went back to browsing through the shops, went to the bathroom, and then walked back up to the Toronto streets and back to the hotel (on the way back I observed that the visually-impaired-oriented beepers on the street corners that beep when it is safe to cross the street beep alternatively from both sides of the street, and as you cross the street, one of those beepers gradually gets weaker and farther away, while the other gets stronger and closer. That must be part of the system to help the visually-impaired people safely cross the street). And now here I am, in the hotel room, blogging away, anxiously waiting to finish so I can go outside and explore daylight thursday Toronto. I just have to take a shower first.