Travelling from Oregon to Alberta: an August 12th flashback

Let’s talk about my hellish day.

My trip started early in the morning of August 12^th …
In fact, with my mobility scooter,
I had to take the paratransit service and leave at 5 AM,
limiting me to a mere 6 or so hours of sleep.
So the day already started much earlier than normal...

...but ended just after midnight on August 13^th.

This trip was supposed to be *four hours* in total; a simple trip from Western Oregon to Western Canada. But I started my day having to leave the house an hour before my parents and meeting with them at the airport.


Instead, a month in a day; a veritable endurance test. Yet somehow, driving would still have been less convenient, so there was no great and permanent loss. (18 hrs of *driving* which would likely take 2-3 days versus 17 hrs in airports and airplanes.)

Here is just the NOTES I took for writing about August 12th, as I was experiencing it:
 

Before delving into the gory details, I want to reassure the reader that in fact I was in relative comfort. My ‘survival’ can be attributed to travelling with my parents and modern airports featuring food, comfortable chairs, and WiFi. I was only in the air for 3-4 hrs total!

The most upending part of the day, for me, was the lack of productivity in every regard, which usually confounds and irritates me. But perhaps there was an accomplishment of keeping my nerves intact. As the day proceeded, I realized quickly that this day could be much longer than I had any idea, and began conserving my energy and holding onto my patience for as long as I can. This is a superpower I have from living with a neuromuscular condition, even as I faced a total loss of energy from the day as a whole. But I delayed it enough to keep going towards my destination of Edmonton. 

The route was meant to be Portland à Seattle à Edmonton. But we were routed through Calgary…this barely increases the flight time if you simply to look at time spent in the air. So much of the time was in fact spent in airports.

See below for some very crudely redacted boarding passes highlighting our route (Portland --> Seattle -->Calgary-->Edmonton)!

Most importantly, Air Canada was poured into the mix, alongside Alaska Airlines. Ordinarily, my experiences with Alaska are largely good, but today was miserable (the 12^th).

Hopefully you know, but maybe you don’t: I use a mobility scooter, which had to accompany me from Portland to Edmonton. This did not pose a problem itself for much of the journey, asides from some confusion, but it did require me to make use of airport wheelchair assistance.

Portland was fairly smooth, even though it was busier than normal for a Monday morning and we had to explain the scooter-and-wheelchair situation again. But after we got on the plane, we learned that the flight would be grounded FOR MOST OF AN HOUR. To their credit, we were served water bottles during this period, but it was a fairly slim consolation. I did notice that the pilot personally apologized, which was cool! All thanks to the Seattle Air Traffic Controller, we were now set to land at 9:40 am with our next flight at 9:45 am. We received assurance that our flight landed in the arrival gate right by our departure gate.

They were right! But the wheelchair aid was not available at the gate in SeaTac and we had to argue with the staff. The razor-thin margin was entirely destroyed; we hit the gate at 9:50 am, and the flight to Edmonton had left without us.

Feeling stung, we headed to Alaska Customer Service for help, and we were told that there were no available flights direct from Seattle to Edmonton, and we would have to fly to Edmonton *through Calgary*.   Unless we wanted to wait over night for a free direct flight the next morning. That would have been too much – with the gift of hindsight, I can confidently say this. We were given ~4 pm tickets. The service representative thanked me for being so kind, which surprised me! But it was an interesting compliment to be given in an airport, especially one too busy for its own good like SeaTac.

At this point, I was still feeling spirited, given that we still had established our way to get back, since I knew that my energy had to be reserved. This ordeal took us long enough that it was around noon before I even realized. We ate some sashimi for lunch and I wasted other time around with my laptop and the WiFi. (I told you it was handy!)

Around then, my mom returned with vouchers from Alaska Airlines for $36 in food, having spoken again to Customer Service. This time she had spoken with a CRO and explained the situation. My mom had us buy food with the vouchers and keep it for later…and then we tried to make a 2 pm flight from Seattle to Edmonton. (The food actually came in incredibly handy later in the day when our energy levels were dropping a lot.) But this flight was full, and the chances were low. 64 seats and 57 people had checked in. After 30 minutes of tense waiting…we didn’t get the flight!

My dad commented that our seats on the previous Edmonton flight (9:45 am) were probably given away in the same way.

But two of our checked in suitcases (of 4) somehow flew to Edmonton without us, taking off on this flight. (Please forgive this conjecture… To our great surprise, the suitcases arrived at 7 pm, several hours ahead of us! But the flight from Seattle to Edmonton is around 2 hrs and it left around 3 pm. There is a time zone difference of 1 hr. And the baggage probably takes an hour for unaccompanied baggage to be identified and brought to the office. This places the time around…7 pm!)

So we had to switch back to the 4 pm flight to Calgary. Those who were wondering why I had two identical boarding passes….that is EXACTLY why. But our flight was delayed by 40 minutes to around 4:30 due to maintenance. The pilot for this flight also ended up apologizing for delays! We actually could have boarded the plane earlier but there was a communication failure between the maintenance crew and airplane crew….Miscommunication sure seems like a theme here huh…..

 We spent enough time in taxi that it’s probably again the fault of the Air Traffic Controller. But this flight was slightly longer than the others, at 1 hr and 8 minutes, so we got a chance to ask the flight attendant questions about SeaTac. We got told that in fact this mess was normal for SeaTac – they’re quite simply too busy among other things.

We touched down around 6:30 pm with the next flight at 8 pm.

Here’s a picture of my touching down at Calgary!

But Calgary was my port of entry and my dreaded immigration ‘showdown’ was before me. Around 7 pm, we spoke to immigration, only to discover that maybe my Fulbright documents were not enough on their own. At the least, the documents explicitly stated the purpose and duration of my visit and offered details about the grant.

But I faced more confusion than expected. And my expectations for the day finally began to sink – it was a turning point where things could become much worse. I had no Welcome packet from the embassy. In the end, I had to do a secondary immigration interview because of this problem. I was panicking but I got help from my parents.

 My Nexus (Trusted Travelers card for global travel) helped convince them that I was definitely worthy of entering Canada. Only through my father did we have this smooth of a time. His expertise in immigration from Canada to US and vice versa saved the day. But it cannot be understated how much nicer Canadian immigration tends to be than US immigration.

But we arrived at the Air Canada desk at 7:50 pm, only to be told they had no record of us. Alaska gave us boarding pass only for Alaska leg and we had to get a separate one for Calgary to Edmonton. The desk was not willing to help and told us incorrectly that only Alaska could help us. For some reason our connection from Alaska (who redirected us to this flight) was not noted! We spoke with Alaska on the phone throughout this process, both about our boarding passes to Edmonton AND about our bags.

This was pretty analogous to my issues with immigration actually – a total, complete, absolute lack of proper communication across country lines. So we were not let on the flight, and had to wait until 10:55 pm for the last flight to Edmonton for the day.

At this point, the day was pretty ridiculous and my patience was definitely wearing thin, and I desperately wanted to get some sleep. This took several attempts of visiting desks before we finally found the right place. Instead, we went to the international departure and asked Air Canada for help, and were somehow able to get our boarding passes. This is the Air Canada boarding pass in my photo. We were so glad to see *these* Air Canada people who ensured we could finally get to where we needed to go. At 10:55, we actually flew out.

I took a couple photos of the Calgary airport at night, which is actually an incredible aesthetic!

But there was one last leg of fun in the Edmonton airport. My mobility scooter, after the flight, was wheeled out from the rain by an airport employee into the airport terminal.

But it would not turn on, even when I turned the key. Even when I made sure that the scooter was not in “Manual push” mode. Even when the scooter was wiped down. Not that rain normally is a problem, but it had been a really hellish day.

In fact, it was around midnight on the dot when I was figuring out this scooter situation.

Surely not that much water, I decided. Next I plugged in the portable charger into the outlet right by the door and into my scooter. But the most puzzling result came on: a flashing yellow light, indicating *no* battery. Not dead battery, but no battery. My father, the usual expert was not there, and instead I was there confused with my mom and the airport employee.

The person mentioned that they were instructed to disconnect the battery.

This was unusual.

I have NEVER had to deal with this before.

I was honestly at a loss once more.

But then I noticed cables sticking out from near the base, below a black hemisphere that shields the battery. Taking it off revealed that the cables had been connected to each other and not to the battery, with the black and white portions lining up. This proved an easy fix, even as tired as I was.

The scooter lit up, complete with a celebratory beep, bringing the life back into my worried head. My mom and I went ahead and we witnessed relief in the form of a sign:

We then met my dad at the car rental place across the street from the airport at 12:30 or so. To our great surprise, my dad had found all four of our baggages – like I said earlier, two suitcases were found in the baggage office. We finally reached the damn hotel around 1:10 am , with sleep around 2. …Combined with breakfast at 8 am, it was a very abrupt way to transition from hotel to Edmonton proper.

But that sleep, short as it was, let me reset from this hellish day.