We are supposed to be in BC with friends at this point. We aren’t. Vancouver airport just doesn’t seem to be able to deal with snow and freezing rain. We had arrived at the Edmonton airport on time yesterday afternoon, having checked before we left home that the flight was posted as being ‘on time’, when all of a sudden the gentleman at the gate announced that we would be delayed leaving for a minimum of two hours because Vancouver (YVR) had shut down to deal with the snow and rain. After an hour of waiting, the airline (Westjet) just gave up and cancelled the flight. We were sent home… and we try again this afternoon at 5:15 pm.

I do worry about both Vancouver’s and Victoria’s ability to deal with snow and crappy weather; what the heck are they going to do if the weather turns foul during the 2010 Olympics? Hopefully this botched Christmas season was a wake up call to the airport authorities, and the airlines!

Westjet was very good… very helpful, and very cheerful throughout the process. Avis, on the hand, was less than accommodating. I phoned the Vancouver outfit that we were supposed to rent a vehicle from to let them know that we wouldn’t be arriving until the next day. But they informed me that they didn’t have a car to rent me the next day! I offered to pay the extra day for the car that they were going to give me if we had arrived on time, but they are unable to process payments over the phone! So, we end up loosing a day’s vehicle rental… but they end up loosing a customer. I’ve booked a car with another renter, to be picked up on Sunday.

The other thing that annoyed me was the cost of the cab to get home to St. Albert… I’ve done the math over and over, and can’t believe that it is cheaper to drive my own vehicle to the airport and pay for parking there for the week than it is to take a cab both ways. It really is no wonder that the airport authority has had to expand its parking facilities, and that the taxi queue at the airport is always very long and never seems to move… I suspect that a lot of the greater Edmonton residents using the airport have figured out that it is cheaper to ‘park and fly’.

I just keep muttering to myself; we could have driven the jeep to Vancouver…

In the meantime, I figured that I would just post a couple of pictures; me, my father, and G., and my father and G. These were taken last week when we attended the memorial of one of Dad’s sisters in Victoria…