TORONTO CONNECTION

Based on Sarah Palin's foreign credential standards I now have Canadian experience since I stopped in Toronto for a 2-hour lay-over. Hehe. OK, back to our regularly scheduled broadcast...

I started my trip to Shanghai this morning with a painful 5am wake-up buzzer. The only good part about waking up that early is that there is no traffic on the roads. Believe it or not, in 39 minutes I was able to drive 9 miles to the airport, get my boarding pass, clear security and reach my gate! I had some time to kill & thank God MCO has great internet access so I made some calls to Greece via Skype before boarding my Air Canada flight to Toronto.

It is amazing how short a 3 hr. 15 minute flight feels when you have a 14 hour flight following it up. It literally felt like that flight was only 50 maybe 60 minutes long. It just goes to show how the body & mind compensate perception to match the contrast in scale. Maybe I should start pretending I am going out for a 15 mile run and then 10 miles won't take so long?

Upon arriving in Toronto I overheard this girl say, "It is nice to be in a real airport and not that piece of s*** in Orlando". I instantly took some offense to it, but realizing that I am now on diplomatic territory (i.e. non-home turf) I took it with a grain of salt. Well, then I walked into the airport and let me tell you - she was right. From the architecture to the food selection, it is an exceptional airport by any standards. Certainly not my favorite, but definitely a cut above Orlando. My theory on the chasm between a lot of U.S. airport and other international airports is simple. I will use the mobile phone analogy. We were the first to create cellular infrastructure, so, we relied on old technology and antiquated roaming systems while the new developing world got brand new GSM technologies. I think that this is the case with airports also. They aren't like basketball arenas where we tear them down and then build a new one next door every 20 years. You kind of have to live with it and just patch up new terminals otherwise it would not make much sense.

Anyways, that's it from Canada. I need to finish up my Coyote Jack's Grill chicken sandwich and go board. Hope everyone has a great weekend.


Here's the plane I rolled in on from Orlando....