Friday news

Yesterday, around 11:00, we drove our daughter to the airport. She is going to Valencia (Spain) to the International Conference Digital Society where she will be presenting her research about 3D printers.

She had 3 planes to take; Ottawa – Montréal, Montréal – Zurich (Switzerland), Zurich – Valencia.

We got at the airport around 11:45, it was raining with a mixture of icing rain. From home, she had checked and all flights were on schedule. We dropped her off at the airport and drove to our trailer in Val-des-Bois. Her first flight was scheduled to depart Ottawa at 13:50.

We haven't been to the trailer for almost 3 weeks. We don’t keep heat in the trailer, so the first thing we did was to start the central heat, and a space heater. The temperature inside was around 0° C (32° F).

Following that, we shovelled 3 previous weeks of snow. It was not too bad, it took less than half an hour for my wife and I to clear enough to park the car and open a path to the door of the trailer.

I got the basket of food out for our deer (Two came in the evening around nine to enjoy the free meal. I’ll try to get a small movie of them and post it probably Monday)

It was around 14:00 when we finally entered the trailer. The first thing I did was to connect the laptop and check the email. Our daughter had left 3 messages; the first one was about 45 minutes before her flight, she was enjoying the lunch my wife prepared. The second email was 30 minutes before the flight; she confirmed that everything was on schedule. Not even 5 minutes after, she wrote one sentence: her flight has been cancelled.

OMG knowing my daughter, she must have been in a panic mode at the airport, the first leg of her trip was cancelled! We haven’t gotten direct news from her since, she wrote a brief note to her sister from someone else's cell, to say that everything was OK.

By the time I post this, she is likely in her hotel in Valencia, getting some ZZzz!

If my daughter is smiling… Hola Julie!

Update:

Email we received from  Julie:

My trip involved:
- 6 planes (including the cancelled and missed connection).
- 2 trips through security in Ottawa.
- 2 times where I was grateful my bag is so easy to recognize.
- 1 The Amazing Race style run through an airport, barely keeping up with a much older couple.
- 1 British girl living in Valencia who speaks Spanish and somehow managed to get all the same flights as me.
- 1 temporarily misplaced checked bag, which I will hopefully get delivered to the hotel tomorrow morning. British girl was VERY useful.
- 2 look at beautiful buildings in Madrid.
- 1 delicious croissant.
- 1 hilarious metro mix-up
- An arrival time of 16h00ish Valencia

I'm going to buy myself a plug for my netbook, and I'm gonna go eat supper, and I'm going to wash my clothes in the shower and hang them to dry, and shower, and hang out in my hotel room for the rest of the night!