Punishment Cheese in the Wild

Day 1 April 30th finds me Vegas bound and not at all used to modern travel.

Today's Toronto is a shadow of the one I grew up in.

No matter how many times I travel to Vegas I underestimate how much effort it takes to get out the door. Even with checklists. And minimal garment requirements.

Nevertheless I executed well enough to have time to make a giant roast beef and cheese sandwich on light rye bread for the road. The rye slices are the size of hubcaps, and I added a pound of green grapes to the bag to serve as washing down material.

And then I took a 10 minute nap before departure for Flusherville Junction, to catch the Cannonballs Express that links up with VIA. Uncle Joe was movin' kinda slow but still got the Cannonballs Express there on time.

My ride's here.

And then the mask went on. And it stayed on. And I'm not used to it at all. The train ride to Toronto was the longest I've worn a mask.

This isn't the place to discuss the larger issue - the smaller issue is that I don't like it. At all.

It was a pleasant enough trip, with lots of sights to take in, as long as you can take them in in about 300 milliseconds.

The train was packed with train services consumers.

Lovely scene, beautiful dog, happy re-union that lasted minutes.

The best part of the trip was seeing a guy sneak in some VIA Punishment Cheese using the under-mask flip-n-gulp technique.

Punishment Cheese, spotted in the wild.

 With plenty of time before my flight, I made use of the food court at Union Station to unmask, and eat a late lunch. I added an order of Waffle fries from McDick's that turned out to be a really, really, really bad, cold, dead poutine. Jesus Malarkey what a sad box of coagulated McShite.

I could barely eat half of it. I decided it would be best to eat both halves of the roast beef and cheese hubcap. Because I would be going through security at the airport soon. Ditto for the pound or so of grapes.

I was stuffed. But that's a good thing.

When you're on the road, never risk going hungry. Flusher's Rule.

Having had a decent break from the mask (which I find hot, hot, hot and not in a good way) I got moving and jumped about the UP - the train to the airport.

What a mass of seething, lining up humanity in the terminal. An Air Canada employee saw me taking pictures and specifically went out of her way to explain how this was the fault of a Federal Government decision. Probably true, but thanks for that.

Fortunately, this didn't affect the US lines. I sailed through, notwithstanding 15 minutes of panic, stress, misunderstood instructions, and so on. As usual the Nexus part of security was closed, so I had to do the whole Shoes Off Stumbling Hokey Pokey followed by the Repack Redux.

By the time I got through customs, I was a wreck. I get really stressed in the run-up to a trip, and it doesn't ease off until I'm through security. It eases off even more once I've boarded, and even more than that once we take off.

I'd walked about 17 miles, doing the whole drag the luggage and security customs hat dance and was sweating buckets. And up to the Maple Leaf Lounge I went to relax and unwind.

That's where I am now.

Well the place is like a furnace. I don't know why it's so hot!

I grabbed a double vodka rocks and cold water. And another cold water after that.

And of course, the have a nice little food ordering system. And I'm stuffed. To be honest, there's not much I would consider eating on the menu. Maybe the butter chicken.

I much prefer the new Air Canada colors and bold roundel logo to the airy-fairy blue out of focus one, don't you?

A tail of the tales.

The next big thing is to get sorted and get my ass down to the gate - and hope that the flight leaves (close) to on time. Because I have a bit of freeplay to get that expires at the end of today. Hopefully I'll get to the casino in time!

It's AC 1853, if you're inclined to follow along.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ACA1853

Tally-ho!