After a very, very late night that included some tasty martinis, some incredibly stiff cocktails, homemade white wine (thanks Gisela!) buffered by only a couple of hours of sleep, the three of us dragged our pathetic selves out of bed well before 6am (!!!) so we could get Iris to the airport on time for her flight back to Germany. There was, as you could imagine, a lot of complaining, but it was a beautiful bright morning and squinting did wake me up a bit more during the drive. It was a slight improvement over my usual one-eye-open-in-the-morning routine. My last early-morning long-haul flight was from New Zealand to Singapore (that's a whole 'nother story), which -- after a big night in Auckland -- felt like the longest flight of my life, even though it was only about 10 hours. Since then, I've sworn myself off those...
We skipped the entire Air Canada queue by going to the Express kiosks, which apparently you can use even with a paper ticket. Very convenient. I thought you couldn't use it once you had a paper ticket. She also wanted to change her seats, so we thought we'd give it a try. She inserted her credit card as reference, and a number of touch-screens later we obtained 3 boarding passes (Vancouver, Toronto, and Frankfurt), declared how much luggage she had, and selected seats for all three segments. That's such a time-saver, especially since she wouldn't have to take her bag off the carousel in Toronto for her flight to Frankfurt. Then we went to the GST rebate office to try to get some of her tax back, but her purchases were $2.51 off from the minimum requirement for a claim... well, you win some, you lose some. Iris won some money in Las Vegas, so it was her turn to lose a bit, even though it wasn't very much compared to her wins at the Vegas slots.
We said our goodbyes after some breakfast and industrial-strength coffee, and tossed up the idea of meeting in Spain next spring, before I fly to England for Lucy's wedding on May 1. I was thinking of Barcelona... the architecture there is something I want to see for myself.
Tschüss Iris, see you in seven months or so!
Speaking of early mornings, I had a reminder of another early morning meeting in July, when I read Ramon Stoppenburg's latest update:
Ramon Finally Posts His Last Photos of LetMeStayForaDay.com in Canada
Just what Christa was dreading... Ramon Stoppelenburg posted on his website the photo of her sleeping after I picked him up from the train station at an almost-equally-ungodly hour of the morning on July 21. We brought his stuff to the apartment for a layover before his trip to Vancouver Island. I took him to my local coffee shop for breakfast to let Christa sleep and so we could have a bit of a catch up. By the time we returned, Christa was showered and awake, so I plugged Ramon into my home network and got him high-speeding on the information highway so he could post his updates. After getting him a healthy start to the day, I gave him a bit of a mock interview.
Here's the link to that post with his PhotoJams and video clips.
