Consider this the personal part of my diary of my trip to DomainFest in LA – I wrote this part on the plane yesterday. If you are looking for news from the event itself, you’ll be more likely to find them on my other blog, DomainEditorial.com.
January 31st, 2007:
Air Canada moved all of their flights to the new Terminal 1 in Toronto starting yesterday. So anticipating a little “new” chaos, I tried to make my way to the airport early. Well, tried. Things just don’t always work out as they should, so I arrived just the recommended 90 minutes ahead of my flight. At least I had checked in on the web the night before, so I should have been able to pass quickly through the Web-Luggage-Drop Off counter (where you don’t actually drop off your luggage, since you need to clear US customs first).
So I get to the web drop off counter and just in front of my 5 people join the row. Well, there was one whole counter open in this area, so I prepared for the long wait. An Air Canada employee appeared and managed to send some of the people in front of me away, since they had not actually checked in on the web. Still, some of those people that had not checked on the web remained in the line, so the wait took a while. Meanwhile, a friend who is traveling with me calls me and tells me he’s on his way, but late. So I give him directions on how to get to the counter, since he had checked in on the web as well. It’s almost my turn when they decide to add two more check-in agents, what a great move. One of them takes a while to adjust his monitor, since his station is right underneath one of the neat windows in the the roof of the new hall. Finally I am checked in without any problems, my luggage is tagged, so on to US customs and immigrations.
I am still ‘just’ a German citizen, so I get into the line for the people traveling with a Visa waiver form. Basically this means you need to fill out an extra form (I94W used to be the name, I think they have a new name for it now though) and they will fingerprint your two index fingers (on an electronic fingerprint machine) as well as take a picture of your face with something that looks like a basic webcam. So it’s always a gamble, but usually this line used to be of the shorter lines in Terminal 2, and in Terminal 3 you always had many people in front of you some of them taking ages to clear immigration (I missed my flight once due that that).
Well, there’s nobody else in my line – so far so good. However there is no open counter in front of the line. In fact, my line appears to share counters with the US citizen lineup, which is quite long. Especially since some of the officers appear to be leaving at this time (they were actually turning off their lit number signs at this point). Plus the person directing people to counters actually appears to only direct the US citizens to agents. At this point in time I am joined by a British fellow, who appears to be a little nervous about catching his flight (which is scheduled to leave 5 minutes before mine). After a while the person assigning people to desks actually notices us and moves me to one of the two open counters – next.
So after the immigration control (the officer barely asked me anything, complained about the glare on his screen when I asked him how he liked the new terminal). Also one of his pens was not working, so I promised to bring him a new one next time I see him. He was joking about wanting a Mont Blanc pen, but I said I could only offer him one of these hotel pens that I pick up on my trips.
On to customs, which was uneventful as usual, just showing my customs form. Then the luggage drop-off “Please put your suitcase on the X on the belt, wheels up”. Well, since I am not traveling with an upright suitcase I decided to lay it on it’s side instead of having it stand upside down on the belt. Next: Security. Normal stuff, just for some odd reason they wanted to X-Ray my laptop bag twice.
On to buy a drink, some food and water for the flight – off to the gate, where my friend joined me about a bit later. So we are in the air now – just past Denver on our way to Los Angeles. Turns out both rear toilets in the plane are clogged or broken, and the crew has not yet found a way to unclog them, so they are even possibly considering going to Las Vegas instead in order, since the lineup for the remaining front toilet is quite large. The pilot explained all of this and basically told us to try our best to keep it in and that they will try to arrive in LAX early.
Well, we did arrive about 15 minutes early – at the end of the flight the pilot again apologized for the “poor maintenance status” of the plane and sent us off. I had some problems with the pressure changes on the plane, this must be the last remains of my cold.
(to be continued)
