On Friday, for the first time in my life, I flew Porter Air.
I don’t fly very often, and am far from a sophisticated traveler, so I was all sorts of excited. Let me first say that flying out of Toronto to Ottawa, you get to take a boat to a plane.
How cool is that?
That is way cool.
I swear, it was kind of like going to the Ex, only cheaper and less scary.
On the ferry, I spoke with a flight attendant. Wearing her pillbox hat, she looked like somebody stepping out of the 50’s or 60’s. She was heading to Montreal for the weekend. I don’t know, it sounded provocative, that, swinging, even.
A couple that was heading to New York for the weekend, were standing next to me. They had tickets for the Yankee/Twins game later that afternoon and they couldn’t stop smiling. They were the envy of the airport, I think. The man leaned over to me, “AJ Burnett is pitching today. I hate him. I hate his guts. Turncoat!” And then he just beamed.
Waiting to pass through security–which felt more like getting into a nightclub than passing through an airport– three people grumbled behind me. They complained into cell phones and to each other. It was raining. They were running late. Work sucked. I’m hungry. It was clear from being exposed to them for only a few minutes, that they fed off of one another’s negative energy, and that each day they lived ended up being a disappointment.
At the gate, two women dressed conspicuously in red, talked loudly of their trip to New York. The young one, who was probably in her early 20’s, was tall and thin. Dressed expensively rather than imaginatively, she had arching red fingernails and immaculately maintained eyebrows. She wanted people to think she was a model heading home to the Big Apple, and not a Forest Hill girl who was disliked at her high school.
Across from me, a man in a black leather jacket watched hockey fights on his laptop. He was slightly embarrassed, concerned that the sound might be a little loud. The woman sitting next to him didn’t seem to mind, stealing occasional glances while she did her knitting.
Beside me on the plane sat a nervous young woman. As soon as we took off, she put down her novel– R is for Ricochet– and began to feed herself candy, which she did all the way to Ottawa.