It's been a long day and I'm only finished the first of three legs of this journey. Basically, it has been uneventful. The flight from Calgary to Toronto was only three hours and twenty odd minutes but seemed to take forever. I slept a little and watched the movie Inception, but didn't get to the end before we arrived in Toronto. As we were coming in for the landing and while the aircraft was somewhere in the sky at 10,000 feet +, it suddenly and without warning banked hard to the right and them just as quickly banked left and straightened out. It was sudden and fast enough to cause me to mutter WTF to myself. Someone came on the intercom and apologized three or four times stating that we had come too close to another aircraft and had to evade their turbulence. It was worth a chuckle after it was over but at the time I thought, WTF are we going to crash? I'll never make it to Kabul. But all was well and the rest of the landing took place without incident.
I left the secure area and headed toward Terminal 3 which is where I thought I connected to Emirate Air. When I got there I discovered (again) that I should have put my glasses on before reading the ticket. We arrive at Terminal 3 in Dubai, but we leave Toronto from Terminal 1 where I had arrived from Calgary. So it was back to Terminal 1. When I got there I realize the ticket that was printed for me in Calgary didn't have a gate number. With well over 500 gates at Terminal 1 I had no idea where to go. So I approached the Emirates Air desk to ask. Buddy had a look at my itinerary and told me that my booking didn't show the connection to Kabul and that meant that I would have had a very hard time leaving Dubai without a Visa. So he added my Kabul connection and issued me with a new ticket. I may have screwed up on the Terminals but everything does happen for a reason and if I hadn't screwed up, I probably would have gotten jammed up in Dubai.
Finally, when I got through security I scouted out a place to eat. I hadn't eaten in about 11 hours and by belly was starting to think my throat had been cut. I had a beer while waiting for the grilled salmon I'd order and had quite a buzz on by the time I finally ate. Just to make certain the buzz was a good one, I had another pint. $46.00 for two beer and a bite to eat. Good thing the UN is paying me good money.
Waiting for Reg to make an appearance. We will make the rest of the journey together. The adventure continues although I still have another 25 -26 hours in transit.
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