By Lucy

Sunday dawned too early. My body seemed to have decided 8 AM is up time. I rolled over and checked my phone – my solitary message was Paul telling me that the strike had been averted (for now, but now is all I care about). Guess who’s my bestest friend? I mean, I would have checked anyway, but he did too!

I made myself a tea and cut myself a slice of cheese to wake up my guts. Then I began the solemn process of tearing down my rig.

I teared up a few times. This was practically easier than the move from Barrie, but felt more emotional. A month in England, no big deal, plus I had Rich to help me. I felt his absence stronger than ever this time. A local who could tell me how to behave.

I walked up to Kevin’s to get a ride to Tina’s. We asked for a booth. Paul and Rob showed up. We all ordered coffee; Kevin and Paul took theirs black, but Rob surprised me by ordering tea. I got the banana split waffle. Me, Paul and Kevin had a rapid fire conversation about things like the voltage generated by the mill, while poor Rob just tried to keep up.

I’m always disappointed when I had to head out, but it was time to earn my ticket.

I had Paul give me a ride home since he was taking my rig. Wolfgang came outside just as we loaded the last of it in the car, tears in his eyes. He talked for a bit and showed Paul a video of his guitar playing before we were able to peel away.

“Well, now you’ve had the Wolfgang experience.” I said, laughing.

Paul took off. I ran upstairs to change and grab my pass, and walked down to the marina.

I ran into Kevin2’s friend River as I got there. They assigned us to clean up all the sandwich board signs; the stands are the city’s property, but the signs taped to them are not. Some genius used duct tape to attach them, so I lost the top layer of skin on my hands peeling off metres of duct tape.

After the signs were neatly put away, they handed me an empty garbage bag and a pair of gloves.

I actually enjoy picking up trash. The part of me that enjoys cleaning generally, but you know what people do when they’re dancing and having a good time? Drop stuff! I found:

• a whiskey bottle
• a hotel key
• a debit card
• an inhaler
• 10$ in change
• a full unopened chocolate bar

That done, we helped tear down the VIP area.

That brought me to 2PM, and there wasn’t a lot else to do. Plus, I had a busy day ahead of me. I told one of the organizers I was heading out, and he thanked me for coming and gave me a t-shirt.

I went back to my mostly-empty room and teared up a little. This was real.

I started by reorganizing my trunk. I couldn’t empty it for Emily, sadly, but I could at least try to give her as much space as possible, and make sure the car maintenance things were at the front.

Then I started loading boxes and bags into the car.

Kevin showed up most of the way through. We talked a bit while packing up the last bit of stuff.

At 5 I drove down to K’s place. Despite him pestering me to come over and hang out one last time, when I got there he complained he was just about to go for a nap. I threw my laundry in his machine and went back out to the car.

“Well, I don’t have space for that!” He protested about my last 3 boxes.

Bollocks you don’t. Your living room is a futon, one of those generic folding tables, a tv, and a home gym that by his own admittance has gone unused for several years. There was no reason my stuff couldn’t fit in the margins, especially since most of it had lived under my bed.

“How’s it going?” Kevin asked.

“Not great.” I explained the situation.

“You could always put it in my storage locker.” He offered.

Of course.

I waited til my laundry was in the dryer. “Coming with?” I asked K.

“No, I’m gonna have a nap.”

Yeah, you’re gonna really miss me.

Kevin’s locker was mostly empty, so he also invited me to empty out the trunk I had spent the better part of an hour organizing in the blazing sun. Oh well. We sat around talking for a bit longer.

When I went back to K’s, I realized I had a sunburn. I’d just sort of assumed I was too tanned to burn at this point, and that was incorrect. I slathered some aloe on myself, folded my now-dry laundry, and packed the couple of things I wanted cleaned.

At 8, I went over to Emily’s and unpacked the bags of food I had. I had a feeling I was gonna end up in her spare room when I got back, so storing my food here made sense. Gave her the keys to the car and my locker. Stared at them on the coffee table. Giving my life away.

We started playing Jumanji – yes, an actual physical version of Jumanji. If you’re good at rolling dice, it’s not a long or complicated game, unfortunately. Next we played a Switch game called Tower of Babel that was basically virtual Jenga. Sometime between 10 and 11 her and Hanuman decided to retire to bed.

I occupied myself for a bit. Around 1:30 I dozed off on the couch – just because I was pulling an all-nighter doesn’t mean I couldn’t nap.

Hanuman and Emily got up around 2:30 and drove me to the airport. Emily asked if I wanted one last drive in my car, but I declined. No point in dragging it out.

The Thunder Bay Airport closes between midnight and three in the morning, for some reason. So I walked into a ghost town.

The airport is small and poorly signposted. Eventually I discerned that departures were upstairs. I found my gate and sat down near it.

People started to fill in, travelers and staff alike. At 3:30 they opened customs/ security/ the place where they search your bags.

They asked me to unpack my fluids and take everything out of my pockets. He asked if I had a laptop, but when he saw my little device he said the tablet could stay in my bag (ouch). They searched my bag and had no objections.

There was a vending machine that only took cash, sacre bleu! Fortunately, there was a water fountain.

At 4:30 they started boarding us onto the plane.

The guy who checked my passport frowned as his computer said do not board. “They didn’t actually check you in.”

Ruh roh?

“Oh, I see. You didn’t apply for an Australian Visa, did you?”

I blanched. Right, sometimes layovers need visitor visas. I hadn’t even thought of it.

“Australia’s really picky about it.”

“I can do it as soon as I land in Toronto.” I said, panicking.

“Yeah, no worries. Just use the app, it usually gets processed immediately. You can get on.” He said.

I mean, worst comes to worst, I just get on a flight back to Tbay. Urgh.

I had noticed during virtual check-in that the plane was a good chunk empty, so I picked a seat near the middle where there was no one.

The plane is one of those small domestic planes. I wasn’t sure I had ever been on one before, but I knew I wouldn’t like it.

As we taxied out to the runway, I had a clear view of the mill, not that far away. It’s maybe a click from the airport, the same turn off on the highway. That was sort of comforting. The full moon hung, rusty red, over it.

It was too bad we were flying before dawn. Thunder Bay itself is small and was gone in the blink of an eye. There were the lights on the cargo ships, and maybe some of the lights of things like Silver Islet, and then we were over Lake Superior and it was just inky blackness.

For a moment, anyway. We quickly flew into a thunderstorm. The thunderbirds come to see me off one last time. The window was too grimy to get a good video, but I was in awe of watching the lightning jump from cloud to cloud, illuminating the alien landscape like something from a movie.

Then it was boring darkness again.

What would I see if it were daylight? Boats? Could I see the south shore, where I had been not even 2 months ago? Or just the lake?

After we reached cruising altitude (for this plane, anyway) they came around with snacks. I got orange juice and they gave me a packet of Biscoff cookies, curiously.

Not even an hour after take-off, we flew over Sault Ste Marie. The angle implied we have been doggedly following the Canadian shore of Superior. Would I have seen Highway 17 if I had been on the other side of the plane?

From this point on, we were definitely flying over Canadian soil. You could trace the towns and road lights, although I couldn’t quite tell where I was. We weren’t arcing towards Sudbury, my usual route. I couldn’t identify if we flew over Barrie, but Barrie is pretty recognizable for me. Maybe it was on the other side of the plane. The sun was rising on that side.

The plane landed shortly after 7 and we disembarked quickly.

First task – find some food and drink, and a place to hunker down. I had a 12 hour layover here, so I’d be spending most of the day trapped in the airport.

I wandered towards my gate. Might as well start there.

There were some “pods”, but they had the lights turned up, no doubt to discourage sleeping in them. Fortunately for me, it meant there was a small space of no particular use behind them. I went to Timmies and grabbed a bagel and a bottle of juice, then went back to the spot.

I had to apply for that Aussie Visa, pronto. They wouldn’t let me on the plane without it. What did people do before phones?

Now I ran into a problem of my own creation. Rich had persuaded me to buy a FindMe card for my luggage. The problem was that activating the card required me to turn on the Cloud, which required me to use my password… which I had forgotten. When I requested a password reset, it informed me my password would be reset on Monday… meaning today. Meaning I couldn’t download any apps.

Crap.

I tried using the website, which was poorly crafted and hard to navigate. They really were intending for people to just use the app.

Crapcrapcrapcrap….

Well. I applied for some sort of visa and decided it was out of my hands.

I organized my bags to settle down for some sort of sleep. The nearest gate was boarding a flight, but after 9 it was quiet. I put on my sleep mask on, used my leather jacket as my pillow, and went to sleep.

Sleep came quickly, but was fitful. After 3 hours another flight was boarding and the terminal was loud again. I was hungry and might as well stay up until the flight was boarded and I had peace again.

The bag was heavy, naturally. Rule number one is to try to avoid leaving your bags unattended – even if they don’t get robbed, airport staff might occasionally wander off with it. However, humans are social animals (not herd animals, I’ve seen people say that) and you can usually recruit a random person to watch your bags. I asked a surly man who was seated near me to watch my bags and he argued with me about it.

“Why? Are you worried about losing the spot?”

Am I worried about losing the spot on the concrete floor? No, not really, I just don’t feel like hauling my 40 pound duffel around with me.

I ran to the bathroom, washed out my juice bottle and filled it up with water, then grabbed a burger at A&W since there was no line. I ate it and the gate cleared, leaving me alone with Grumpy. Despite the terminal having floor-to-ceiling windows, it being something above 30 outside in Toronto, and broad daylight, it was chilly in there. I put on my leather jacket and used my hoodie as a pillow. Sleeping in my jacket and motorcycle boots, like a real biker.

Around 1 or 2 I finally had to get up. I have a hard time napping at the best of times and the thinly carpeted floor of the airport is not the best of times.

The visa hadn’t come back yet. I checked the Air Canada app and it told me to see staff for my boarding pass. I walked down to the station and asked them

“Unfortunately, we can’t issue your boarding pass without the Australia visa. It’ll probably be in soon, don’t worry.”

I called Paul, the only one free, and panicked at him a bit. I was sure that if I was allowed to get on the plane and apply for a visa in Australia, it would clear, the only problem here was that I was being forced to do it over the internet. What did people do before the internet? God I hate smartphones.

At 5:00, less than an hour before boarding time, my phone chirped. “You can now change your password for your AppleID.”

Cue furious typing!

I reset my password, downloaded the app and filled out the application mostly quickly. I encountered a problem when the app wanted to take a picture of my face. Anyone who’s glanced at my Instagram can tell you that I do not take selfies well. The app kept rejecting them and eventually I realized it was unhappy because I didn’t exist in a void. So I jogged around the terminal until I found a blank white wall (hard to find in an airport terminal, when every flat surface is trying to sell you something) and then it finally went thru.

Five minutes later, I got the email telling me my visa was approved.

Fan-tastic. Ironically, if I had been lazy and waited, I would have had more luck and less stress. Or, if I had been smart and thought ahead. Or not lost my password (shush).

Whatever, it was fine now. I sprinted to the Air Canada desk and got my boarding pass, then went back to the gate and bounced with stress in my seat for an hour.

Once I boarded the plane and found the seat, I realized my folly again. I had paid extra for a seat at the front with “extra legroom”. What I hadn’t taken into account was that there was no seat in front of me to stow my motorcycle helmet under. Also because there was no seat, there was no obvious TV or tray. There was also no window. What I really should have done was get the seat at the back of the plane, cuz legroom doesn’t actually annoy me – people touching the back of my seat does.

As the flight attendants drifted through, securing the cabin, one stopped at me. “You need to stow that during take-off.”

I glanced around the full overhead cabins. Can’t I just tuck it under my legs?

“Here, I’ll take it.” A guy from the middle row offered. The seat next to him was empty, so there was extra space under the seat. As he took it from me, he asked, “Is this a motorcycle helmet?” He got excited and started asking me what bike I had. I was tired and couldn’t muster enthusiasm, which felt rude when he had rescued me from the flight attendant, but it is what it is.

I had booked the middle seat, but either the end seat wasn’t booked or they hadn’t shown up, so I jumped into it. The woman in the window seat was quiet.

Cuz we were flying into the setting sun, there wasn’t much to see again. Oh darn. We did appear to do most of the journey over the US, if the map is to be believed. For whatever reason, they weren’t serving a meal on this flight, so I paid for a pair of disappointing sliders. They came by a little later and handed out some pretzels, which were actually pretty good.

I discovered there is a tv and a tray stowed in the armrest. Modern miracles! I watched Monkey Man again. At 8:00 we flew over Ironwood, the second place we had stayed overnight on the Circle Tour, with the hilarious robot front desk and windows with innovative “stick” technology.

As we passed the Rockies, I was as far west as I’d ever been. My childhood road trips had stopped at the Rockies, because apparently there wasn’t anything in BC that interested my parents. I wanted to go to one of the unclaimed windows and look at what could be seen in the dark, but over the Rockies is a lot of turbulence so I was chained to my seat.

There was a lot of turbulence on these flights. Turbulence never really bothered me, but now I’d spent so much time on a boat pitched between 10 and 45 degrees, or rocking, turbulence almost felt like home.

After 4 hours, we touched down in Vancouver, having technically only taken 2 hours due to time zones. It made sense, restocking and refueling before our 14 hour flight to Sydney.

Huh. Air Canada’s website was not clear on that – I’d assumed the flight time was 4 hours to Vancouver, 10 hours to Sydney. I was going to spend 14 hours trapped in the same tiny seat? Why don’t they install treadmills on planes? Talk about pulmonary embolisms!

Vancouver airport is gorgeous, or at least where I was. There was a bunch of Inuit art around, which I admired.

We ended up waiting three hours in the terminal. All the food places were closed, so I grabbed a drink and some chips from a vending machine that finally had tap for card. Then I did laps around the gate for half an hour to stretch my legs.

Back in the same seats at 11PM. Unfortunately, someone had actually taken the end seat this time, so I was stuck in the middle. He was quite friendly though. He was an Aussie who had moved to Ottawa for university, met his Canadian wife, and brought her back to Australia with him. His kids were in Ottawa for uni, so he was flying back after visiting them.

Since we were an overnight flight, they gave us the standard tiny pillow and thin blanket. I immediately unpacked the blanket and threw it over my legs, so they wouldn’t take my helmet away again.

An hour into this flight, they served… dinner, I suppose. I chose the Shepard’s pie, which was cheesy, over-spiced mashed potatoes floating in some weird gravy.

I couldn’t make myself eat much of it. My body was in open revolt over this whole situation. It’s interesting how they only removed my colon, but it had knock-on effects where it shouldn’t affect anything. Like how I went from burping to belching for no discernable reason. On a good day any slight deviation from my required eating patterns can lay me out. Here I was, merrily dancing all over the notion of a circadian rhythm as I attempted to pull an all-nighter knowing there was no guarantee of sleep at the end, travel through several different time zones, and basically living at the airport. I’d had “the grumblies” for most of the day, when I get colicky gas pains so severe you can hear them over the phone (hi Paul). Having severe gas is great for making people avoid you in an airport terminal, not so great when you’re hermetically sealed into a pressurized tube with them. Nonetheless, my options were fart myself inside out, or don’t fly at all, because there was precious little I could do at the mercy of the airline company and customs.

(In case you were wondering, I travelled roughly 17’600 kilometers in the space of 48 hours. The distance between mainland Australia and New Zealand is roughly the same as the flight distance between Toronto and Vancouver, which boggles my mind. The Pacific is so vast!)

After I choked down what I could, I took two muscle relaxers, put on Big Bang Theory, and settled back with my mask on. I fell asleep relatively quickly and easily, but then abject exhaustion will do that to you. I still only slept 4 hours.

All this recycled air was drying out my throat and sinuses. No matter how much water I drank, my throat hurt, and I was perched on the edge of a real nosebleed for most of the flight.

At 3AM – whatever time zone my phone thought I was in – we flew over Honolulu, roughly halfway there.

I got severe muscle cramps from sitting still for too long. I tried to pace a bit, then took more muscle relaxers and sat down to watch a movie.

I ended up watching Shazam 2, which isn’t any good. Firstly, cuz they keep calling the Titans ‘gods’ (they are not the same and yes inaccurate mythology is my foremost gripe). Secondly, the first movie was great because the central conceit was “what if a 14 year old kid could turn into a grown-up superhero at will” and it ran full length with the premise, which was hilarious. This movie basically forgets that its teenage protagonist is a teenager and has him in Zachary Levy adult mode the entire time. Thirdly, it dusts off the tired “ordinary citizens are mad at superheroes for accidental damage” trope. It forgets that the stinger at the end of the last movie was Mister Mind, a super-intelligent psychic alien that looks like a regular terrestrial caterpillar (but we can thank Dwayne Johnson for that). Helen Mirren is great as the bad guy but she’s pretty generic in motivation and action. Also, the movie goes so far into product placement that Skittles are needed to save the day (no, I am not making that up).

Breakfast was pancakes, served less than an hour before we landed. I wolfed them down quickly – I’ve had breakfast taken away from me on a plane before.

As we waited to deplane, I asked the Aussie gentleman for suggestions for coffee. He said a flat white is an Australian invention, although ironically I already know what a flat white is – they have them at Starbucks. He suggested Campoo’s, but I didn’t find a Campoo’s before I settled for something else.

I got lost through Australian customs. Eventually I found a place labelled “International Transit”. Is that me? I got in line.

Australian customs gave me the most hassle, which was annoying considering this is where I was spending the least time. They spent a long time analyzing the tool card in my wallet, but ultimately let it pass. They took away the little screwdriver I brought, but it was 15$ at Giant Tiger so I wasn’t terribly fussed. The worst wound was that they managed to damage my brand new 400$ bag!

Ah well. I gathered my belongings and fled before they could find more issue with me.

I sat down on the first chair I found and fixed the zipper. It reseated easily, which is a plus! Let’s not do that again.

I wandered the terminal until I found a coffee place with a menu I could read. I ordered a small flat white and a danish. Then I ended up at a dead end gate that served Air Thailand and settled down next to a plug. Fortunately I had already bought an adaptor, so I set my phone and laptop charging and sat around for a bit. Since my flight gets in at 11PM local time, all I have to do is stay awake until I reached the hotel, and then I’ll be acclimated.

Speaking of hotels… I noted an email from my new employer and opened it.

She asked if I could delay my arrival until Friday or Saturday, as something had come up with one of her kids and she had to travel to Auckland.

Yeah, that’s fine. Actually, it’s better than before, cuz I was lamenting that I wouldn’t have any time to sightsee in Christchurch before I needed to head out.

I found a hostel in Christchurch that was 30$ a night for a bed in a dorm. I booked the female-only dorm; it was 4 beds, vs 6-10 in the general dorm.

I went back for a second flat white – they were pretty good. Had some sushi for lunch. Bought a new luggage lock for my bag – I lost the one I had before, and I’d want one in a hostel.

We ended up boarding half an hour late, for some reason. I was sort of past caring, but also exhausted from the 2 whole days of international travel.

Dinner was good – succulent chicken with teriyaki sauce and noodles, a corn salad I didn’t dare try, and a caramel eclair. Yum! I also love that the packaging is compostable – this really is the place for me!

I put on Abigail, a straightforward horror movie I haven’t seen before. I couldn’t tell you if it was any good, I kept nodding off. I actually slept thought landing!

I breezed through customs. They asked me if I had any organic material, and had the sniffer dog go around me, but obviously I passed. I was glad I had decided against bringing my hammer and boots – they probably wouldn’t have liked them.

Then I was here, in New Zealand, after months of effort and frustration.

I got in an argument with an Uber driver who apparently didn’t understand that someone coming from the airport might be a bit jet-lagged and confused, but fortunately my second Uber driver got me to the hostel with little fuss. I punched in with my code and stomped upstairs to my room, which was mercifully empty, so I could turn the light on and make noise.

I flopped gratefully into bed. I’d made it.