Somewhere over the ......

• When I was driving the 80+ km from Lipton to the Regina airport, the sky was pretty much clear; a few fluffy clouds contrasting against the blue of the wide-open prairie sky. I was inside the airport for over an hour before my flight with my nose in a tabloid magazine so I didn’t notice how drastically the sky had changed.

• The plane taxied down the runway and as it turned for take-off, I could see that menacing, black clouds had moved in over the centre of Regina city about 3 km away. As we raced along the runway toward lift off, suddenly there was stroke after stroke of lightening. Yikes, I thought – I can’t believe they let us take off!

• Before we were even off the ground, the captain issued his stern warning for everyone to stay seated and belted for the bumpy ride to 40,000 feet. In the blink of an eye, the patchwork of the prairies disappeared below me and I could visualize the Wicked Witch of the West cruising on her broomstick alongside the plane.

• Two hours later we descended into Calgary where all other incoming flights from the east, as well as those eastbound were “delayed due to weather.” It must have been quite a storm. Apparently Regina got a huge dump of quarter-sized hail.

• After several hours wandering the Calgary airport, I happily fired off a text message telling my kids that, after some crazy travel adventures, I was finally boarding the plane, planning a snooze and looking forward to touchdown in Victoria 90 minutes later.

• Not so fast!

• I was no sooner buckled into the seat when the pilot announced that “due to the need to record some maintenance, the flight would be delayed about 10 minutes.” He said he had instructed the crew to turn on the television system and distribute the head-sets. I turned to the guy next to me and said, “that doesn’t sound like a 10 minute delay ….it sounds much longer to me.”

• Sure enough, after 20 minutes the captain came on again to share the news that during the routine checks, one of the maintenance crew noticed “a dent in the tail” that had to be checked out because “if the skin of the aircraft is compromised or if the dent is above a certain size the plane automatically has to go out of service.” Ladders were put up against the plane and the maintenance guys climbed up to check the skin and measure the dent.

• As far as I was concerned, if you have to measure it - it’s too big!

• To be honest, I was hoping they would just take us off the plane. I really wasn’t sure if I had any travel luck left. When they decided the plane could go anyway, that made me nervous since once you’re in the air, there is only one route back to the ground if the tail suddenly falls off. Every time the plane gave a little shudder I half expected it to go into a nosedive.
  

• Happy was I was to set my little feet onto the ground in Victoria! I took a bunch of pictures from the plane I think are actually quite lovely, as well as a photo of the dented tail. Paint, it would seem, is not part of an aircraft's skin. Or, perhaps we just "took another bird" on the descent into Victoria.
  

• The adventures of travellingsmurph are not yet done. Stay tuned for more…..