Yesterday, I had a long day of travel and it started at 4:40 am. I had a drive to the airport. Thank you, Mikey! A flight from Ottawa to Calgary. I fell asleep and when I woke up I was confused for a moment and thought we were really late and that I would miss my connecting flight. I spoke to the man sitting next to me about Django Unchained. He just watched it on the flight. He's was travelling to Saskatoon for work.
Once I landed in Calgary, I had a short layover before my flight to Edmonton. On that 40 minute flight I spoke with the passenger sitting next to me. He asked me where I was headed and when I said, San Francisco. He immediately told me his son is in San Francisco on vacation as a treat for finishing his first year of law school and was enjoying his trip. The passenger was on his way to Edmonton with colleagues to meet with Department of Fisheries and Oceans over regulations. The gentlemen and his crew work for an energy company focused on oil and gas production and have work in Fort McMurray aka the oil sands. I was polite and didn't bad mouth the oil sands. He and his one colleague did seem concerned with the local wildlife and were discussing the date of a project after some migration of a species. What else did I learn from this man? His wife used to work for DND, but now works for Statistics Canada and has 3 years until retirement. She hopes her position will not be cut before her retirement. They have a dog and recently hired a PhD student to house and dog sit while they went away for a week. They hired her from Kijiji and it worked out from. He wished me a safe trip as we parted.
I had an hour and a half layover in Edmonton and grabbed a bite to eat at Chili's restaurant. It was okay, and it fed me. I headed to my gate and saw a sign for Quick Connection to the U.S. I headed in the direction of the sign and asked a woman at the table and she told me I have to HURRY, HURRY because my flight will start boarding in 10-20 minutes ... it didn't board until 30 minutes after that. So I hurried and filled out my U.S. entry form, went through security again and I beeped as I went through the detector. As soon as it beeped, I thought "my belt". I took it off and passed it to the security guard and walked through the detector again without beeping. Then I realized I forgot to remove my bottle of water. I completely forgot about it and didn't think I would have to go through security again since I hadn't left the gates. After that was settled, I went to the gate and waited to board my last flight of the day to San Francisco.
On my final flight I sat next to a retired cowboy/VP of Finances for some organizations. This gentlemen was on his way to Ontario, California to see his oldest son, the orthodontist and pediatric dentist to have work done. I wish I had an orthodontist or dentist in my family, so I could get free or dirt cheap dental work. :-( The man was also excited to see his son's one dog, the Jack Russell Terrier, as they go for many walks and are the best of buds. The gentlemen has two other sons, a general surgeon in Edmonton, and a chartered accountant in Kelowna. The man said he and his wife are disappointed that they have no grandchildren and it looks like they never will. They only have grand-dogs, whom they take care of quite often. Last year they spent 2 months away from home to take care of their grand-dogs. This passenger had been a VP of Finances for some company and had lived in England and Cyprus (Greek Side) for a number of years, which gave him the opportunity to travel for work in Egypt, Botswana, Kenya, Dubai, Lebanon, and many other places. We talked about foods and other locations such as Turkey and Europe. This gentlemen is 73 years old, didn't retire until he was 68 and wished he had retired earlier. He's been happily married for 46 years and loves his wife dearly. They travel often together and play different games in the evening. He also goes horse backpacking in the mountains for 2 weeks every year and has been doing it for 23 years now. He said the group consists of 6-8 individuals and they have a pack mule for every two people to carry the tents, sleeping bags, and food. I found him inspiring and full of life. His eyes were lively and happy and he really enjoyed life. He said to make the most of living and travel while you can and enjoy it. He also said if you don't enjoy doing something (i.e. like your job, hobby) to stop doing it and find something that you enjoy doing because you will be much happier for it.
My passenger was very passionate about horses and we discussed when to train horses (I know nothing on horses). When a horse (foal) is one, he will touch they hooves and legs and brush their back so they get used to humans and the touch of a human, but he doesn't start riding them until their at least two years of age. He also told me that every trainer has different ways for training their horses and for getting them to lie down or go down, which creates a trust bond between the owner/handler and the horse. Apparently, there's a competition every year to train a wild mustang and the trainer only has 90-100 days to do this. There's a prize and they horses go up for adoption. My passenger told me that this competition helps keeps the Wild Mustang population down, but I haven't looked into this. He showed me pictures of the mustangs and they are beautiful creatures. The woman who won it last year was riding her mustang after 3 days and rode to the taco place in town. As he told me this story, I felt a little sad that these beautiful creatures were being tamed and could no longer roam the lands free with the other mustangs.
My flight arrived in San Francisco and I parted ways with my storyteller. I was left wondering why I sat next to three very different men and why they wanted to talk to me and share their lives with me. I didn't mind ... I did a little because I didn't get any sleep. I learned so much today in my travels, and have the urge to travel more, try different foods, and go horseback riding.
I made my way to the station to catch a BART train and met my project manager for my library's Sierra migration. We took the BART train to Union Square and walked to our hotel, Hilton Hotel Union Square. I was so happy to get her and wanted to go up to my room and take my shoes and socks off. I took the elevator to my floor, went to my room and couldn't go in because the maid just started cleaning my room. :-( A while later, I could go in my room, drop off my stuff and decided to go right out for dinner and walk around before bed. I went to Kuleto's for dinner and had Coppa, a spicy air dried pork shoulder (thinly sliced like proscuitto) with olives as an appetizer and had Risotto, with scallops, shrimp, scallions, basil and saffron for dinner. It was delicious and very filling. After dinner I walked up the street to Victoria's Secret and did a little bit of shopping, then returned to my room for a shower and crashed for the night.
Next time you travel see what you can learn from the person sitting next. I bet you'll learn something and may have something in common with that person. Sometimes the World doesn't appear to big.
