Indianapolis - Day 4

Today was nothing more than a very long travel day. We awoke at 5:00am, caught the shuttle to the airport at 6:00am and were immediately stumped by the idiotic self check-in counters that you are forced to use. We spent five minutes trying to shove our passports into the slot where the tickets come out before finally discovering the passport scanners a foot off to the side. Everything appeared to work OK until the very end of the process, when the terminal issued an error, claiming that it was unable to complete our transaction. Given our previous difficulties with the United/Air Canada Star Alliance partnership, we immediately talked to one of the United employees. The system had printed us off boarding passes before crashing, but she printed us new ones for the two United flights we were on.

We went through security, bought a bit of breakfast and sat down to wait a couple of hours for our flight to Chicago. The gate we were at had an earlier flight to Chicago that was boarding as we arrived. Once everyone was aboard, they announced that if anyone was in the terminal for our flight, there was room on this earlier flight. Since it really did not matter where we waited, we took the earlier flight.

In Chicago we sat around for four hours until our flight for Toronto left. The flight only took an hour, but we taxied for 30 minutes before taking off. In Toronto, Sandra had a small supper while we waited for our gate agents to arrive. Sandra wanted to confirm that our boarding passes from the self check-in counter were valid, since you can't leave anything to chance on these flights. After supper, there were two agents at the counter, so I walked up with the boarding passes. They said they were dealing with the arrivals and were not my agent, so I sat down.

For the next 20 minutes, various people on the flight to Regina arrived, were ignored by the two agents until abruptly told to sit down or that they could not help them. These two agents were very bitter and reminded me of most of the employees at the Regina General Hospital - constant complaining about their job and their bosses and how difficult things are, and absolutely no desire to help anyone. In fact, once the flight arrived, they were supposed to help people find new flights, since it was late arriving. In every case, they took the person's information, looked stuff up on the computer, talked among themselves about how stupid things were and then sent the person to the main customer information desk. You know, it has been far too long since we have flown WestJet. I am so sick of Air Canada.

When our agent arrived, the poor guy was jumped by everyone who wanted to talk to him. The majority of people wanted their seats changed because they weren't sitting together, including a number of adults. I was a bit surprised, as he actually rearranged half the plane to accommodate everyone. I checked, and our boarding passes were fine, so there were no issues boarding the plane.

Our flight to Regina was uneventful, but longer than it should have been. The plane had to be de-iced, so we were late leaving, and the flight took longer than it was originally scheduled to. Regardless, we finally arrived home, got our luggage and then waited for a cab. It was better than last time, as there were actually two airport employees taking names and making certain that enough cabs were arriving. However, the cabs were very slow in coming. I don't know what all the problems are with this city and airport cab service, but there are problems and they aren't really fixed yet.

The boys were ecstatic to see us and Xander was even more excited when he found out we brought presents. He put on his jersey and posed for pictures. Evan didn't last long before he had to go to bed, but Xander and I stayed up late playing video games. Thus successfully ends my convocation trip.