teabowl

Impressions from New York:

The City of Toronto has launched a Zerofootprint co-branded CO2 calculator. Zerofootprint is a Canadian not-for-profit aiming to calculate and offset our individual and collective impact on the environment. Above is my own “quick calculator.” I don’t know if I’m supposed to be appalled or elated: being a vegetarian in a small apartment is obviously a good thing; flying around in air planes and driving a car are not.

Try it out at http://www.toronto.zerofootprint.net. Or read about Zerofootprint the organization here.

On my way back from Seattle last Saturday, I had another small travel adventure (my adventure on the way there is described here).

A blizzard had been announced back in Toronto (it was known by Friday afternoon that we’d get a lot of snow - 30cm+). So I tried calling Air Canada the night before to get some advice and potentially re-book my flight to Sunday. Of course, I had no luck with that as they didn’t pick up the phone (or rather, I hung on for around 30 minutes and decided it wasn’t worth the pain in my craned neck to try any longer).

On Saturday morning, I got up at 5am, received an SMS from Air Canada (good use of technology there, btw) saying that the flight was delayed by about 30 minutes, and made my way to the airport. Everything went very smoothly, and before long I found myself at the gate, Starbucks and muffin in hand. Flight AC540 is the regularly scheduled Seattle-Toronto non-stop flight, and it’s become a bit of an old friend.

So we embark on the small but comfortable Embraer plane (the new Brazilian planes Air Canada uses on these flights) and get going. The flight takes 4 hours and 30 minutes gate to gate. Everything seems suspiciously smooth.

When we get to the Toronto area, the trouble starts. We circle between Toronto and Waterloo at least twice (I think it was maybe three times), but they close runway after runway at Pearson Airport, and our fuel - I assume - gets lower and lower. Finally, it’s decided that we’re being diverted: we’re going to South Bend, Indiana. It turns out this isn’t too far from Chicago (not that I knew this when I was there… all I saw was a bleak but dry airport).

In South Bend, we don’t get to leave the plane… we’re refueled and Air Canada practically auctions off the last remaining pay-for food items to the highest bidders. According to Air Canada’s website, we’re supposed to be leaving there within the hour and arrive in Toronto at 8pm. We were originally scheduled to arrive at 3:15pm or so, but okay - there’s a blizzard.

Two problems: they need to transmit the flight plan to us, and we don’t have take-off instructions for South Bend, Indiana. This is not an airport Air Canada typically flies to, so our planes don’t have the South Bend, Indiana, runways programmed in their on-board computers.

How are these things transferred to us, you ask? Glad you did. By fax. Yes. We’re living in the 21st century, and flight plans and runway descriptions are faxed from airport to airport.

As it turned out, Toronto faxed them, but United’s fax machine in South Bend, Indiana, ran out of toner halfway through. So we waited an extra hour or so.

I was home at around 11pm. At the luggage carousel, someone cheekily (I assume) changed the display board to alternate between saying ‘AC540 Seattle’ and ‘AC540 South Bend.’ Since that’s not an airport Air Canada officially flies to, I thought it would be a good picture to capture for posterity. Sort of like a Moment of Zen (thanks to The Daily Show).

So here I was, early for my flight, as it turns out, at Toronto Pearson Airport, e-ticket in hand. You know the drill (well, if you’ve left Toronto by plane then you do):

• Use one of the little electronic kiosks to check in and get your boarding pass;
• Stand in line to get your luggage tagged if you have something to check;
• Stand at a little pod desk and fill in your US Customs form;
• Stand in line to go through US Immigration;
• Drop off your luggage on a conveyor belt;
• Stand in line to go through security…

And then… I realized that I was a bag short. My laptop bag had mysteriously gone missing! I felt naked, exposed, that moment of panic when you realize it’s not a bad dream but you actually left your bag standing in an airport somewhere and it’s probably been taken by now.

I go up to a cluster of Peel Regional Police people, and one of them kindly offers to take me all the way back along my track to see if it’s still there. I am certain I left it at the pod desk where I filled out my forms - it’s not there. I trace my steps back to the luggage tagging counter - it’s not there. Then, I see something green out of the corner of my eye… my bag! It’s still standing where I left it: at the electronic check-in kiosk.

I say to the Peel Policeman, “I guess this proves that Toronto is really a safe city. Or I’m just lucky.” He goes, “I’d go with option B on that one.”

He tells me that they’ve done ‘tests’ with phone books in laptop bags in this airport, and apparently people regularly just steal them. One woman walked all the way out of the terminal: past security, past police, into the parking garage. They nabbed her just as she threw the stolen ‘laptop’ into the backseat of her car. Her excuse? “I was going to turn it into the police when I got home!”

So… I hope this isn’t an omen for how this week will go. One week in Seattle filled with various Microsoft conferences. But I’m staying at a great hotel and the weather’s much warmer there than in Toronto :)

At the gate, I glance into the distance and see the billboard above. Treo seems to be encouraging this laptop-forgetting business :)

Okay, these aren’t really graffiti. They’re mural copies of famous Group of Seven artworks in downtown Huntsville, Ontario.

I’ve been visiting beautiful Frankfurt, Germany over Christmas. Well, I’ve been staying with my relatives in Offenbach, which is 20 minutes to Frankfurt by transit. Been having a great time… an excellent way to take a break, great shopping and great culture. I went to see two exhibitions at the Schirn Kunsthalle - one about the discovery of abstract painting (Turner, Hugo, Moreau) and another entitled ‘Art Machines Machine Art.’

Here are two more random pictures from Frankfurt:

I was in New York in October and ran into these sculptures in Madison Square Park. They’re quite beautiful: life-sized shiny metal trees that oddly blend into the surroundings. I had no idea they were there… it had been one of those long walking days in the city and I sat down on a bench on the North side of the park to give my tired legs a rest.

Through the trees I saw something shiny, so I decided to check it out. It was an interesting moment - ‘discovering’ these sculptures quite innocently, and being genuinely surprised to find them. I wonder if that was the artist’s intention.

The work is called ‘Conjoined’ (one of three - the others are another, bigger tree, and a pile of rocks) and will be there until the end of December, 2007. Although I can’t imagine that it’s as nice in the middle of winter as it is in my picture. Link to the park’s site here.