Day 127 - Out of Town Update

Glen Lakes, Spring Hill, Florida

With Angela taking responsibility for the blog while I was away in Toronto and Tampa, it's time for me to relieve her and write about my trip -- a sort of "guest location" blog.

It was a trip of ups and downs, excuse the pun, in terms of how our flights went. This time of year (Super Bowl weekend), my brother Stuart and I head down to the Tampa area to visit our friends, who spend their winters north of Tampa in the Spring Hill area. They own homes in golf communities, so the extended long weekend consists of three rounds of golf, a few drinks, good food courtesy of our hosts, a group dinner that Stuart and I host at one of the nearby restaurants as a thank you, and then a Super Bowl party where we take sides and play a game where we select numbers that may or may not match up with the total score at the end of each quarter and the end of the game.

This year, Stuart was going to return back with me to Moreton in Marsh to spend a few days here. He also had arranged to fly back from Frankfurt with Lufthansa in first class through a special offer that airline was making -- although he had to fly first to Chicago and connect to Toronto.

Final hole at Brookridge - dogleg right uphill, look
through the trees straight ahead and you will
find my ball!

For Stuart the weather in Florida was going to be a wonderful change from what was hitting Toronto.  When I arrived in Toronto to spend the evening with our kids, the temperatures were typically end-of-January weather. I had flown on WestJet in the airline's attempt to provide Trans-Atlantic travel as part of its expansion strategy to serve European and eventually Asian markets. The only problem is that they use 26-year-old Boeing 767 aircraft that once belonged to Qantas and had been given back to Boeing. Boeing held on to them for a couple of years before off-loading them on WestJet.  As the aircraft is old, the heating was unreliable, so I spent the entire flight freezing my butt off because I was sitting in the window seat. In effect, I was being made ready for the Canadian winter.  Earlier in the month our son Alex had taken the same flight back to Canada, and due to mechanical issues with the plane he was delayed for a couple of hours before leaving.  Little did I know that this would be foreshadowing.

9th hole at Glen Lakes, see the large waste bunker on the
left? My ball was between the trees!

However, Stuart and I beat the incoming snow and had a smooth flight south (at least WestJet still gets the domestic flights right).

The temperatures in Florida over the weekend hit highs in the mid-70s F (22 C) and were ideal for golf -- too bad my ability to play the game was not. I won't get into it, but let's just say that I left a few dollars on the table.  The two courses we play, Glen Lakes and Brookridge, were both in very good shape and, except for rain arriving on Sunday during our last round at Glen Lakes, the playing conditions could not be used to make excuses about how I played.

My luck was much better with the Super Bowl outcome, as Stuart and I shared our numbers and were fortunate to come out ahead.

I mentioned the foreshadowing earlier, so here we go. My plan was to fly back through Toronto on Monday, stay the night in Toronto, spend time with the kids, meet up with a couple of my Ryerson grad students, and leave the following night with Stuart for England. Well....yesterday evening we both took the Union Pearson Express (referred to as UPs or because of the over-spending and under-use I like to pronounce it as "OOPs"), breezed through security and arriving two hours before our flight.  However, no plane was sitting at the gate, and as time went by (and given our doubts about the reliability of the WestJet 767) we began to suspect an issue. About the time they were going to start boarding us, the announcement was made that the flight was cancelled due to "mechanical reasons" and we were to go home or to a hotel and wait for further instructions via email. 

To make a long story short, the replacement flight is scheduled for tonight at 7 [update: it was delayed in leaving by about 3 hours as they waited for a crew member who was needed according to the air regulations for this type of aircraft]. 

Tomorrow we arrive in England where some sleep will be on order. Angela has promised a home-made roast dinner, and of course we'll enjoy a pint at the local!

Ale of Day: Old Elephant Foot IPA, Tampa Bay Brewing Co., Tampa, Florida