Ottawa Part II (finally)

A long, long time ago the universe was created in a violent explosion that scientists call the big bang. Shortly after that I posted the first half of this story and haven't gotten around to finishing it until now. My apologies for the delay.

Anyway, when we left the tale, WereGirl and had hopped into a cab for a ride to the dealership so we could check out her car.

Upon giving our destination to the cab driver a few facts became evident. 1) English was not this gentleman's first language, nor possibly his second or third.. And 2) He didn't know Ottawa and seemed to have even less of a grasp of where we wanted to go than we did. 3) He was a little lacking in what are traditionally called "People Skills"

After some pointing, hand gestures and a long conversation with dispatcher, we were on our way.

The dealership was a rather large one with many building and departments. The driver picked one seemingly at random and let us out there. We advised he that we'd need to go in to get the chit to pay him. This did not please our driver at all. He grumped loudly about it but gradually came to the realization that we just didn't care that much, so he followed us into the dealership muttering under his breath.

We arrived at the service desk and were met by a pleasant young man who had no idea who we were or what we wanted. After explaining or circumstances to him WereGirl gave him the name of the woman she'd spoken to. This elicited a blank stare and he asked for the woman's last name, which WereGirl had not been told.

Eventually he managed to figure out which department we'd need to deal with after having had a car accident and gave them a call. They seemed to have a bit more of a clue. So, he filled out the chit for the hostile taxi driver who then left our lives, hopefully forever.

The building we needed to go to was "next door", yet he offered to have a car take us. This was a little confusing and seemed like more hassle than we wanted to go through to travel what we figured must be 50 to 100 feet. The man looked perplexed and started giving directions. By the third or fourth turn we concluded that possibly his definition of "next door" and ours may have varied slightly and we reconsidered the car offer.

After being driven several blocks to the repair shop we had a look at WereGirl's poor, beat up car. It had arrived only recently and was still coated in ice and had about 15 pounds of weeds wedged into every crack and crevice in the front end, including a number of cracks that hadn't been there when we left Windsor. WereGirl discussed the next steps with the young gentleman staffing the shop who had remarkably few answers. Someone else would have a look, and they'd get in touch. I think WereGirl filled out some papers, we cleaned about 87 coffee cups out of the car (WereGirl has a "mild" caffeine addiction and didn't want auto mechanics thinking she was a slob.)

That taken care of we walked out of the dealership. Somewhere along the way (I don't remember when exactly) PilotBoy had called back with the results of his research on how to get us home. The plan was that WereGirl and I would would take a commercial flight to Toronto where he would meet us and drive us home in his car, affectionately known as "The Family Truckster".

Our next step was to get to the airport. We were on the completely wrong side of town, low on cash, WereGirl's cell was dead and mine just barely hanging on. We walked about a block to a nearby diner, sat down, grabbed a bite and tried to figure out how to get to the airport. The first step was to call friends in Ottawa who might give us a lift. DevilBoy lives in Ottawa, but was on springbreak, and out of town. Eggman also lives in Ottawa, but had moved a while back and I hadn't gotten around to putting his new number in my cell. WereGirl's also had a couple of friends there, but just couldn't manage to track them down.

After 45 minutes or so of abject failure WereGirl had the brainwave that we could just take the bus. Brilliant plan, now we just needed to figure out which buses to take from where we were. WhereGirl found the number for Ottawa transit and got directions. The man sitting at the next table, however, was an Ottawa Transit driver and felt that the route we'd been giving was... sub-optimal. He gave us new directions and he and his wife were even nice enough to give us a lift to the proper stop to get us on our way.

The bus ride was mostly uneventful. It was a bit tricky making sure that we didn't miss the stop where we needed to change buses, and then spent what seemed like an eternity shivering there, waiting for the next bus.

The bus dropped us conveniently right in front of the terminal. After a bit of confusion we managed to find the right ticket counter and pick up our tickets. We checked in, found our gate and sat down to wait.

Predictably our flight was delayed. In fact, the plane had been delayed an hour in Montreal by the same storm that had gotten us into this in the first place. Flying from Ottawa to Toronto takes about 50 minutes, so the delay was actually longer than the flight itself.

I enjoy flying, so the flight itself was fun for me. WereGirl wanted to sleep, but had foolishly choosen the window seat, so my leaning over to stare out the window and chatter about the various great things I could see outside kinda precluded that...

After our short hop, we landed in Toronto and disembarked at the new terminal. I'd never been there before and both of us were at a bit of a loss on how to get out and couldn't figure out why PilotBoy hadn't met us at the gate. We called his cell after finding some pay phones and discorevered that, predictably enough, he was waiting at arrivals and gave a gate number that made no sense with what we could see. There were plenty of signs for restrooms, telephones and assorted other things, but none that really directed us out or to his location. We wandered in what seemed like an appropriate direction and eventually found a map. Having been awake for over a day at this point the best our sleep addled brains could figure was that we needed to go down a floor... We continued wandering, finding a dead end or two, before finally our way to the arrivals area and found PilotBoy.

We made our way to the Family Truckster and headed for Windsor. PilotBoy is a good guy. He's drive three hours or so to Toronto for Detroit, waited a few hours in the airport and now was driving us the three hours back to Windsor. I stayed awake for part of the trip, but once we left to Toronto, the almost 30 hours of wakefulness caught up with me and I blissfully passed out.

It was 3:00 in the morning by the time they dropped me off, seldom have I been so glad to see my little house or my bed.