Good-bye, Toronto! Hello, Vancouver and Whistler!

Countdown to Vancouver 2010 Olympics: 4 days; 12 hours; 8 minutes
Days until departure to Vancouver/Whistler: Departing

Good-bye Toronto! Hello Vancouver and Whistler! I am coming and I cannot wait to experience you and yours over the next three weeks! I hope you're ready for me.

1:08 PM EST: My dad had to drop me off at the Pearson Airport terminal early this morning - like 10 AM early. Maybe that was a little too early. It meant that I was stuck in the terminal for close to 6 hours as I'm departing on the 4 PM flight from Toronto to Vancouver.

I ran into my first glitch in departing for my the flight however. My bag was six pounds overweight, and as I had no means to transfer six pounds elsewhere, it meant I had to pay a 75 dollar surcharge. For six pounds. Damn my mother and her "gifts" to my aunt.

When I head back to Toronto, I'm purchasing a seperate bag and having it checked in order to make sure that doesn't happen again.

4:20 PM EST: This plane ride was my first in realizeable memory and the sensations it left in my stomach when we took off was unusual, but at the same time exhilerating. Maybe it was the excitement. Or maybe it was because the sensations were so similar to that of a roller coaster.

Maybe it was a bit of both. All I can tell you is that years of riding various roller coasters at Canada’s Wonderland made the feelings seem almost routine. Which was probably a good thing.

I did have some nostalgia though as we rose higher and higher over the city, and the landmarks that I've been so familiar with in the area around Pearson International Airport became smaller and less distinctive, just another busy city landscape that permeates our planet. As we left that land behind us, I couldn't help but wish that I never left already.


Mid-flight: What you said was true, Marty. Saskachewan is very, very flat. Incredibly so almost. Also it's covered in white stuff. Although the same could almost be said about Ontario too, except that most of what I saw of the province involved Lake Superior. Either way, I'm having a lot of fun with the view from a cabin window close to my seat.

~ 5:15 PM PST: The in-flight entertainment was far better than I expected. Actually, I had expected to discover the true meaning of boredom on it at some point during the 5 hour trip. But when they offer programming such as Season 3 episode 1 and 2 of Big Bang Theory as well as two episodes of 30 Rock that I haven't even seen yet, it's hard to be bored, really. My only real complaint is there wasn't a single episode of How I Met Your Mother available to view.

Plus, watching those Rocky Mountains pass beneath you through a cabin windows while listening to the music of the new Star Trek movie that you're playing on the back of the seat in front of you had to have been one of the best parts of that entire flight.

~ 6:10 PM PST: I admit it. The longer I had to wait for my suitcase to roll down the chute and onto the conveyor belt at the pick-up point at Vancouver Airport, the more anxious I got. Various scenarios ran through my head of lost or stolen luggage and given that my precious hockey skates were stashed in there, nevermind a good chunk of my wardrobe, I was worried.

Then I saw the suitcase roll down the chute. And I relaxed.

7:10 PM PST: On the charter bus to Whistler, one of the things I noticed with Vancouver was the hills. As in the huge, sloping roads going up and down and onto on soaring bridges unlike anything you'll ever see in Toronto  over what felt like a million different rivers that coursed through the area. The Don River and the sloping valley it resides is run-off by a road in comparison. Even the hills of the Canadian Shield north of Toronto couldn't compare to this.

Marty would have had regular heart attacks driving stick in this region.

It was an entirely different feeling than that I'm used to with downtown Toronto. And it was then that I myself realized how flat Toronto itself is.

8:30 PM PST: This bus ride is supposed to take 3 hours. It's dead black outside, except for the headlights of the bus and the other transport trucks trudging along in front of us. For the most part, I can't see a thing outside my window except for the thick black of the night.

And maybe that was a good thing. Given what Nick told me about driving up to Whistler on the Sea-to-Sky corridor, it seems to involve some cliffs right next to the road, or at least its precarious enough that he couldn't imagine anyone driving over 50 km/hr on it.

Maybe it was the claustrophobic sensation that the enclosing darkness left me with, but let’s just say it seemed as if we were going well over 70-80 km/hr on it. And that wasn't much of a comforting thought as we trudged along into the night towards Whistler.