Rowkin Rovings Blog

Saturday 29th April – “C” Day – Commencement Day
Extremely early rise and shine, well maybe not so much shine, at 4.30am. The girls certainly knew something was up this morning as normally they still had four hours of sleeping available to them. Whilst we had showers and got organised, Toque snuck into Joannie and Simons room and commenced bouncing all over Simons head and licking his face. Not sure if he was quite so keen to be woken that early in the morning.
We said our final farewells to the girls and snuck out the back door. We are pretty sure that Toque howled after we left. Joannie will probably have come down and taken her back to bed with her. Mapes will just hang around on the couch down stairs waiting for the guys to come and feed them.

Flight across to Toronto was chokers as they always seem to be now. Fras took a photo of our obligatory first flight of each trip.

Isn’t it true that you always get one obnoxious passenger on the flight and this one was an American guy behind Di. Apparently his US credit card didn’t work and he was extremely upset as he wanted to buy one of those delicious reconstituted plane meals that you can get at 35,000 feet. He then went on to tell the entire plane in his annoying loud American voice that he stayed at a Holiday Inn last night and that they do not have a free breakfast and that he was very annoyed with the Air Canada service. Guess what bucko, get over it!!!! He was also one of those typical American males who could have done with missing out on a meal each day for the next five years.
Great view flying over. A lot of people do not know that a lot of Canada is made up of lakes. Of course in winter they are all frozen. Canada holds the most fresh water in the world and me thinks that it will eventually be the saviour of Canada as it will become more valuable than oil. There was still some snow around but the lakes had thawed. Of course with so much water, there comes lots of bugs especially in the provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. Alberta is quite lucky as the cooler summers keep them away.

Four hour lay over in Toronto at Pearson airport. Tried to get standby on an earlier flight down to Miami but of course that never works when you are flying on points. Never hurts to try!!
So here we sit at Toronto airport awaiting the flight to Miami when we are called out to be told that Di’s bag was not loaded in Calgary. Unless it gets to Toronto by 4.30pm which is the last flight to Miami for the day, Di will be sleeping in the buff tonight. One would hope that it is only for tonight. We are sharing our hotel room tonight with Sue and Steve and Sue had been teasing Fras that she only sleeps in the raw of which Fras was looking rather mortified. Steve was never really in on the joke but he certainly is now. Hopefully Fraser has a T-shirt that is big enough to cover all the necessary bits.
We are not going to go into the repercussions if the bag does not get to Miami before 5.00pm tomorrow. Too scary to contemplate.
So arrived into Miami about 7.30pm and went to the carousel to pick up Fraser’s bag and laundry and behold, out pops Di’s as well – yippee. This calls for the purchase of a lottery ticket.
Walked out of the airport to catch the bus into South Beach where the hotel is and got knock d sideways by the humidity. We had forgotten what that feels like. We left Calgary this morning when it was -2c.
Arrived at the hotel to meet up with Sue and Steve who had already booked in as they came down on the midnight horror. We booked the room on points so we have a double room with two queen beds which for one night is fine.
Wandered around for a bite to eat and prices were pretty expensive so opted for McDonalds. Didn’t get back until 10.30pm. All of us are pretty buggered so off to bed in readiness for day tomorrow.