Day 95

Day 95 - February 6th, 2006 - Toronto, Canada to San Jose, Costa Rica

It was snowing for two days before we were set to head back to Costa Rica for Part Two of the motorcycle trip, so I suppose we couldn't have picked a better time to return to the sunshine. We left for the airport early due to the bad weather we had the night before, but it turned out to be clear roads and little traffic the whole way so we arrived at the airport way ahead of schedule. The assistant at Continental Airlines told us that he could get us on an earlier flight out of Toronto, and that it would mean more time for us on our stopover. We agreed, and shortly thereafter the man disappeared behind the counter with my passport for an extremely long period of time. We were actually starting to get a little bit worried that we were going to get yanked off to customs, but in the end I everything turned out okay and we made our way through to the security clearance area. Ever since the episode with the shoe bomber you now have to remove your shoes in the airport and run them through the x-ray machines, along with the rest of your carry-on luggage. My revenge for the inconvenience is passing the customs official my worn-each-day-for-3-months-in-hot-sun-motorcycle-boots which I can assure you are not the epitomy of pleasantness at this point. After we cleared security we waiting at the gate for our plane to arrive, and were quite shocked when it did! It was so tiny. Then at boarding time we had to exit the terminal, and run across the tarmac to get on the plane. It was extremely windy and you could feel the plane shaking on the runway....before it was even running! The plane fired up and the pilot came on the speakers shortly after explaining that the flight would be delayed indefinitely. His exact words involved "miscommunications with air traffic control" and "hope for the best"...not exactly the most reassuring words to hear before takeoff!! We also happened to be sitting in lucky number Row 13. (Okay, it said Row 14, but it did come after Row 12, and so it technically was the 13th row). The pilot came on the speakers again and clarified that due to high winds at the Newark, New Jersey airport where our connecting flight was scheduled, our plane would need to wait until further notice to take off. On our second stretch of the journey we had a very friendly man seated next to us, but two obnoxious passengers across the row from us, one of whom was actually caught smoking in the airplane washroom and denounced infront of the entire plane by the pilot. The mostly empty 40 of rum in their seat storage probably had something to do with it. By the end of the day we were totally exhausted. As soon as we got to the hotel I crashed.