In the Air

Meet Bernie!

Today was a big day for the contingent. Loading the bus to get to Toronto was an interesting endeavour because while loading the bus, we ran out of room in the gear section so we ended up with our packs filling the entire aisle of the bus. It was PACKED!! Finally arriving at the airport was a nice break from being crowded by gear. Getting everything off the bus was much easier than getting everything on the bus. For Ryan and Caitlind it was a new experience, as neither of them has ever been in an airport or on an airplane before. Since they were the novices and we are evil, we made them the navigators of the group. They had to find our gate (C35). They did really well – we made it to where we needed to be. Before boarding the plane it was evident that Caitlind was very nervous – shaking and all.

Ryan was quite confused during the plane taxi. At first it never got above 20km/h, which certainly isn’t enough to get a plane off the ground. And then the plane completely stopped, which, further boggled his mind. Then quite unexpectedly it goes from standing still to 30 km/h to 50, to 100, to 200, and finally 300 km/h in a matter of seconds. As he said, “once you get up a bit though, your ears stop popping, then you look out of your window and see the beauty of our earth. As the light fades to darkness, you could see the moon sitting there… almost like you could pick it out of the sky. That moment particularly stuck with me. It almost seemed as though the plane was not moving, as we flew across the sky is was completely smooth. Lastly the interactive screen was very slow.”