Canada: Departure part I

12:30pm

On the Gatwick train. Exciting, never really travelled alone, even when I left Adelaide I had Heidi to see me off. Changed at Clapham Junction from Putney. Classic busy English train station.

It's a nice change from the Piccadilly line to Heathrow! Sad to leave Colleen, but excited about my trip. Hope the flight is comfortable, I have brough plenty of books this time. And of course ipod and Nintendo DS :-)

1:00pm

Queues at Gatwick suck. A reporter is interviewing people behind me about them. Lots of news at the moment about how bad the airports are.

Must admit though, at least here there are lots of friendly people in yellow tee-shirts that make sure you are in the right queue and passing out the 100ml bags.

2:30pm

After grabbing a mars bar I was able to survive the security line. Happy to have lost the awful woman and her family from the check-in line (almost laughed out loud when she shouted at somebody for queue jumping and her teenage daughter had to tell her it was a premium economy passenger). Just ate a very average baguette but nice apple juice, off to find a toilet, then my gate.

3:00pm

When you have checked in, have your boarding pass, wandering through the duty-free shops, it's still a little unreal. However when you arrive at your gate, you see your flight number and VANCOUVER up there in big digital letters, it's suddenly very very real! Very warm here, but I just have 30 minutes or so to wait.

5:00pm

Plane is slightly primitive, no personal video screens. Oh well. After I'd presented my boarding pass and was walking down the aerobridge, they called me back!! Not sure why, but my seat got changed. I'm now sitting in an exit row window seat. Probably a lot better than where I was - there is loads of leg room.

Shrek is on the cabin video screen - not sure I want to see that again! Hehe, Amy would have been ticked :-)

12:00pm - (Vancouver Time!)

I figured I may as well set my clock backward to BC time. Given they are showing 4 movies, and the second one is nearly over we must be something approaching halfway. Don't know what the movie is, some sort of "Teacher does good for gang violence cycle teens". There is a toddler a few seats to my left, but she's been pretty quiet.

The obligatory gay male hostie just asked her if she likes "the Little Mermaid".

I also have kids behind and in front of me, but they've been good as gold.

Saw a few pretty mountains peeking through the lower clouds before, but nothing but white now.

We must be past the east coast of Canada by now, I should get ready to wave to Colleen's folks. But maybe not, thanks to Mercator. I mean we fly over Iceland and Greenland. I wonder how many people ask why they don't fly straight :-)

Oh, there is a lovely cool breeze at my feet, which is, as far as I can tell, atmostphere from outside leaking in through my emergency door seal. I'm sure it's meant to do that.

12:30pm

Oh. What I took to be a lower layer of cloud actually appears to be frozen tundrea. Don't I feel like an idiot? Took some photos for later perusal but my window glass is quite bad.

1:00pm

According to the map we are over the water, past Greenland. I think it's called Davis Strait. I was roughly right about the east coast, but way more north than I thought. It's going to have to be a big ass wave.

We are approaching Baffin island (which looks bloody huge), about 5 hours to go. The toddler is crying like a bastard, but also very sleepy. I'm optimistic. "Godhavn" and "Godthab" - good Greenlandish names. I want to visit "Goose". I wonder if they call people "Goose" there, as Colleen is wont to do when I am foolish.

Optimism on toddlers ability to sleep soon is waning quickly.

It's totally wacky how everything is in French and English. I love it. The hostie even asked me if I spoke French or English when giving me the exit row briefing.

Still feeling kind of wakeful and perky. London time is about 9:30pm, so I guess I will start to feel it soon.

Here, over the ocean (if the map is right) I actually believe I can see icebergs. I thought at first they were just clouds, but I think they must have been Titanic-bane.

Kid in front of me just lost his pillow behind. I gave it back. I wish he'd repay me by stopping bouncing on the fucking seatback.

No I'm not getting grumpy.

Toddler is... asleep.