"...Ladies and gentlemen, we have now reached our cruising altitude of..."

December 2nd.

The big day had finally arrived.

Time for me to finally go back to my hometown of Whitehorse, Yukon.

Was I nervous? You bet... But also freakin' excited.

Ever since moving down to Washington State, I'd previously been back here to the Yukon twice, both times being in the summer. So, it's been 10 years since I experienced a true winter that you can only find "North of the 60." But, it's pretty amazing just how fast you can remember the true brutalness of the Yukon winter as soon as you step out into it. But, this is why I decided to come up here in the winter, versus the summer. (Well, that and the fact that my boss wouldn't give me time off in the summer anyways.) I love the cold!

When I finished my last post, it was about a quarter after 7, and I was in a state of delirium due to the fact that I'd already been awake for 37 hours straight. Not a very good decision on my part, though I didn't exactly have much say in it due to the outside conditions of my current enviorment. So... I needed to come up with something to do. I decided that since I'd been up for soo long already, I would put off sleep for a few more hours until the International Terminal would really quiet down. So, I thought to myself, this would be a great opportunity to enjoy the great laws of Canada for legal consumption of alcohol. Gotta make my parents proud, eh? Just kidding btw. But, you know what was really weird about that whole experience? I wasn't carded! My first drink at a bar, and I wasn't carded. That was kind of a letdown, but I got over it pretty quick. So, if anyone at the Koho Restaurant and Bar at Vancouver International Airport ever reads this, thank you for that awesome experience. But next time, you should probably card me. Just saying.

After that whole fun experience, I made my way back down to the International Terminal to set up my camp for the night. I wasn't sure exactly how I could guarentee that I would not sleep in for my morning flight, so I had to go to one of my favourite websites for some help. www.sleepinginairports.com Check em' out sometime! In all honesty, I don't think I would have ever seriously considered spending two nights at the airport without coming across this site. The fact that YVR is in the top 10 of the best airports in the world to sleep at sure didn't hurt either. But, to keep on rolling here... I decided my best chances would be to do what I'd seen others do on the site: Post a sign at your "camp" requesting someone please wake you at the time you write down. It's bound to work, because you're always going to find people who do the same thing as you and look out for each other in this "community" or at least someone who's sympathetic to your so-called plight. So, with blank paper and some chewing gum, I put up signs on both sides of my baggage cart I'd been lugging around so that I would have my alarm, as I call it, to wake up the next morning.

It ended up being that I never needed to put the signs up.

Somewhere between 9PM and 10PM, I feel asleep, FINALLY, after only being awake for 40 hrs. It was around 12:30AM when I popped up all of a sudden, like I'd been hit by someone in my sleep. In a frantic state, I looked all around me, because in all that excitement of suddenly waking up, I'd totally forgotten where I was. Directly across from me, there was this older woman, about mid-50's, just glaring at me while she watched "The Wizard of Oz" on her mid-90's looking laptop. Lemme tell you what, that glare was uncomforting. Trying to avoid eye contact with her, I kept looking around until it finally started to click in my head as to just exactly what city, and for that matter, what country that I was in. Wanting to get away from that woman, I packed up my "camp" pretty quickly. (All that packing up took was unplugging my laptop cord and closing up my backpack.) I went down to the Domestic Terminal and had some hot chocolate from good ol' Tim Hortons. After hanging out in the Domestic Terminal for a couple hours (as well as making a couple new friends (who I doubt will ever remember me, if you kinda get what I mean...), I went back to the International Terminal to make camp again. This time, the woman was gone, but not wanting to take my chances of her coming back, I made camp in a different section. I plugged my laptop in again, turned on some music, and just laid down. I never intended to fall asleep again, but it happened. Thankfully, I woke up exactly at 4:28AM. (The time I'd wrote on my signs from earlier was 4:30AM. Pretty cool, eh?) After having a Clif Bar for breakfast, I once again made my way down to the Domestic Terminal for check-in at the Air Canada booths. Air Canada and WestJet both have a new set-up that wasn't there last time I was at YVR. They now do it so you check in yourself at a touch-screen computer terminal, and then an agent verifies your tickets and baggage, and then points you in the direction to take your checked bags. (Yeah, you have to do it yourself. Lazy, right?) At the very least, it's simple and straightfoward. But, smartly, they still have some of the standard check-in counters. The one aisle is for premium customers, and the other I'd assume is for ticket sales (for walk ups) as well as folk who are "old-foggies" and can't figure out the technology. Then of course, the next step was to go through security. Per my usual style, I'm not gonna go into any huge detail of that part. But, as it always has been for me in Canada, it was simple, and the workers were friendly to me.

After I got through the security gate, I made my way to the gate where my plane would be loading, which was C31. It worked out okay that Gate C31 is pretty much the closest gate to the security gate I went through, so that was kinda nice. But, since I knew I had nearly 3 hours to kill now, I decided to walk around a little bit. A little further down, they have this really cool wishing fountain that features some pretty neat First Nations art as the centrepiece. I took a picture of that, so it should be in one of the albums on Facebook, somewhere. (As of 12/7/09, I don't believe I've uploaded it. It should be up by the 15th though for sure.) And then, of course they had a newsstand, a Starbucks, some little cafe place (that was charging $1.69 for a cafeteria-size milk carton. Ugh.), and so on. Sadly, beyond those three places, everything else was closed, considering it was 5 in the morning and the main morning rush doesn't really hit until a couple hours later. But, luckily, YVR's free wi-fi does extend into the gates area, so I had at least something to occupy my time. Did some Facebook-ing, a little reading of the news, and so forth. It dragged on a little, considering I'd spent so many hours at the airport already that I'd pretty much gotten more than a healthy dose of it all. But, I made it. Boarding was supposed to start at 7:10AM, but because this lady on the incoming flight from the plane we were going on required someone to drive her around to her next connection, we had to wait, because the gate agent was the only one around to do it when she got to the gate. I think it was around 7:27AM or so when we finally started boarding. At this point, I was rather impressed, because this gate agent was on top of everything. You could tell he was a veteran of this job the way he was able to rush everyone through the ticket check. He was able to get all 32 of us on the plane, checked and loaded up, all with about 3 or 4 minutes to spare. Good job sir!

After that... it was time to leave.

Time to say goodbye to this huge expansive building that I'd called home since Monday night. It was a little strange, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't happy. Beyond the fact that I was FINALLY leaving for Whitehorse, I was starting to get a little sick of YVR, so it was kinda nice to leave. Of course, when I fly back down, I know I'll be able to navigate that place like I worked there. Depending on the baggage crew's speed, I could potentially be out of that airport 15 minutes after I land back at YVR. (Maybe I should try that... That'd be quite interesting.)

So, now, at this moment, I'm just relaxing, enjoying the fact that I'm inside a heated house versus being outside in the -20C cold of the Yukon winter. I fly out on December 9th, and I'm scheduled to arrive back in Pasco just after midnight. Oh, what a long day that will be. I can't wait!