24 January 2007

Pre-Printing Boarding Passes

I love the ability to print my boarding pass from anywhere I can get access to the internet and a printer. No longer do I need to worry that I didn't make the cut off!

Today it is now mandatory that ALL airline passengers must carry a passport. How much longer till they ask Canadians for the finger and eye prints as well?

I am AC Elite so I get 3 bags - I swear that when I pack my luggage the contents are like bunnies - they just keep multiplying. I zipped into Thrifty's auto rental in Terminal 2 (closing Jan 20, 2007 so the small pleasure of crossing the road to get your rental disappears) so that I could run in and print off my boarding pass.

Who on earth designed Terminal 1 at the Pearson Airport and the mess of roads that goes with it??? I'd give them a failing grade! (That deserves its own rant on this blog in the near future).

Gave up my 1 litre bottle of water to security - why, if I'm willing to drink whatever is in my container am I not allowed to bring my reusable FULL water bottle on board? (Considering that I had already sucked back 32 ounces when I returned the car I wasn't sure that my kidneys could handle 1/2 litre more), ignored the plastic bags offered by those people, put up with the attitude of those people as I laid my computer in the grey tray, handed over my boarding pass, made sure that only I pushed my bags towards the x-ray machine (dear goodness we certainly would not want those people doing anything extra like helping to push items), walked through the metal detector and collected all my stuff.

Another bonus of AC Elite - access to the Maple Leaf Lounge. Complimentary serve yourself beverages from a full bar line up to decent beer (Alexander Keiths and Sleemans are both on tap), wines, liquors and liqueurs - enough to make one very liquorish, internet and computer access, printing, snacks, massage chairs, local free calls - how great all of it is.

(Did I mention I got a new laptop to replace the one that was robbed from my sister's house - the nasty, low life horrible people who think they have the right to kick someone's door in and take what they want - the nerve to wear gloves and to cut alarm/phone wires - and why did ADT not notice that there was a problem with the power - what does one pay a monthly fee of $25 or so since 1999 if they can't even catch that? - but I digress - this little Mac has a great built in dictionary which I just discovered).

Back to the Maple Leaf Lounge - picked up the current issue of Food & Wine and copies of the National, G&M and the Montreal Gazette. Helped myself to a plate of broccoli, carrots, bread & butter gerkins (the ones the serve in the Montreal airport are better as they are not the bread & butter variety), Just how do you spell gerkin? Skipped the cookies (the sign warned they contained nuts and most likely that nasty hydrogenated stuff that I try to avoid). Skipped the soups, the bread, the apples (granny smiths and red delicious) and the oranges. Poured myself a glass of white wine once I chilled the glass with the supplied ice-cubes. Then found myself a comfy chair, powered up the Mac, logged onto Data Valet and pulled up messages. Wonderful.

13A - ugh - I really need to look at the seat configurations - I would rather has centre ailse seat with no one next to me than the 2 seats by the window with someone next to me.

The sound system today was bad especially during the feature film AC doesn't charge you for the headphone sets like US Airways ($5US) but the bad thing is that they toss them after each flight. Sure they encourage you to keep them (right like the lazy sloths known as human beings would actually take that responsibility on). That means that on each flight anywhere from 100 to 650 headphone sets are tossed - that makes thousands and thousands of these are chucked each and very day. How wasteful. Heck they charge $2 for a pillow and blanket so I bet if they charged $2 per headphone set more of us would not toss them.

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