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Not this week but last week, last Monday in fact, I landed in Toronto a 7:30am, 90 minutes after leaving Washington and 32 hours after I had taken off from Sydney, Australia. My route home had been booked fairly close to Christmas, and as a result, cheap fares were in short supply. This fare, the cheapest by roughly $500 or so, made it an easy decision.
So easy in fact I didn’t stop to look at the itinerary.
Taking off from Sydney at 4:20PM Australian EST, I landed in San Francisco around 10:20AM Sunday morning. No matter how old I get, I won’t find that still marvellous. I then took off for Washington-Dulles at 4:20PM (note the second time on Sunday January 3rd I had taken a flight at that hour), landing in Washington itself just after midnight.
Upon arrival I grabbed my bags and gazed hazily at the Departures screen for my flight to Toronto, which was nowhere to be found. Grabbing my phone out, I had a few moments of frantic searching before I realised my flight was out of Ronald Reagan, and the fine reprobates operatign shuttles at that hour of the morning would steal 2 hours and $30 from me before placing me at the wrong end of the wrong terminal at 3:30am, Monday, January 4th.
You know how it goes from here.
By the time I went to bed and woke up Tuesday morning (for Monday is a day of work dear brothers and sisters), I honestly for a moment had no idea where I was. I hadn’t been in my own bed for weeks. I hadn’t actually laid down to sleep since Friday Toronto time a full four days earlier.
And now I sit writing from a hotel in LA, the time 12:40AM. My body would no sooner have a sense of how it should feel than a trained circus animal occupying the Burbank Studios to the south of me would know what to do with a cigarette and a cameo opposite Megan Fox (it would, however, still manage to out-act the poor woman opposite it). The time does indeed say go to bed though, and so got o bed I shall.
Spare a thought for me as you read this tomorrow; time travel is not for the faint of heart.
