Come Fly With Me…

Many who know me are aware of my travel ordeals…and my most recent trip to the Dominican was no different. My son and I were heading to the DR to celebrate his uncle’s birthday, he had always wanted to go to the DR so this was a great opportunity for him to go. The unfortunate side is that he had to travel with me and encounter the lack of travel preparedness I go through, even though I always think I’m very prepared.

I was up until 1130 pm the night before packing our stuff and getting ready, I had gotten so tired that I went to bed and didn’t check us in online. 4am came around pretty quickly and up I got to prepare for the day…you know one last check to see if I had forgotten anything and of course my obsession with vacuuming the house before I left…this obsession is for another day and time. Everything was good to go. My friend Bridget is the most prompt person I know so of course I asked her to be at my house to pick me up at 5am so we could make our flight at 7am. At 445 am I sat at my laptop to check us both in, what a long process when travelling abroad. It took me 5 minutes exactly to complete the check in. It was 450 am when the final page on my check in screen popped up and said I had successfully checked in, YAY! It also noted that my flight left at, wait for it...6am.

For the first time in my travel adventures this one was my most worrisome moments, I mean how the hell am I going to make it to the airport which is 30 minutes away from my house, check my luggage, get through security and make the flight…I panicked. My fear really came from I knew how upset Anthony would be if we missed this trip.

I called Bridget to see where she was located…I asked for a landmark when she said she was almost here…it was dark she didn’t know what landmark to give me and she panicked when I yelled “I need you to speed and get here as fast as possible”. Now anyone who knows my friend Bridget knows she obeys the speed limits so I knew I was asking a lot. I was frantically running around, yelling at Anthony (my son) to get the luggage outside. He was not impressed with this newly discovered take off time, he kept saying to himself “oh great I’m not going to the Dominican, I’m going to miss my uncles birthday” . I’m yelling at him to put the bags in my vehicle, I figured I’d just drive myself…the entire time I had Bridget on the phone and she was trying to tell me where she was but nothing was registering and she was twice as stressed as I was being super aggressive with her trying to make sure she was speeding to get here as soon as possible. Finally she says “I’m turning on your street so I yell to Anthony “grab the bags out of my vehicle and come on” Throw them in Bridget’s trunk. Bridget jumps out and says “you can drive” and I looked at her and said “you’re fucking right, let’s go” At this point when we leave my house it is exactly 5 am, flight leaves at 6 am.

The ride was adventurous, out of my peripheral I could see Bridget holding on for dear life, using her passenger break and her breathing had increased to the point I could see her chest going up and down as she inhaled and exhaled. It was when I reached 160km I said to her “don’t worry Bridget, I know how to drive this fast” she just sat quietly, never saying a word as I talked myself through the journey and sent out positive thoughts into the universe…”we are going to make it Ant” I assured him. We made it to the airport at exactly 513 am…I kid you not, 13 minutes. I had already prepared Anthony for our next move when we stopped…”no fucking around” I said, ” grab the suitcases and run” he listened. The Westjet rep saw us coming (wait, is it seen or saw?) anyhoo….she said “on your way to Toronto?” and I said “no, on our was to the Dominican and I can’t miss this flight” she said “oh, I have to call up to see if they will let you try to make it” I was careful not to snap out on her and tell her about how many other times I’ve made flights with 5 minutes to spare but decided that wouldn’t work in my favour. She was awesome, she got our luggage checked and told us to go that she would put the suitcase through for us. You know what happened next? We made it, we made the flight…we may have been the last ones boarding but we made it.

AND THEN THIS HAPPENED…

We had a connecting flight in Toronto, meeting up with Anthony’s uncle and his wife. I decided I was going to eat an edible before I boarded the next flight…I figured it would calm me down and just overall relax me from almost missing the first flight. The problem with edibles is, you just don’t know when they’re going to kick in. About an hour and a half into the flight it kicked in…right at the time that we would be flying through an hour of constant turbulence. A full on panic attack kicked in. I was squished in the middle of two strangers, both sleeping. As I tried to talk myself out of the panic attack it started to get worse. I knew I had to get away from these people I was sharing space with….truth was, I didn’t know if I was going to throw up or shit myself…the panic attack had hit so damn hard. Finally I tapped on the the guy sitting in the aisle seat and told him I had to go the bathroom. He was drowsy so he was taking his time to get unbuckled and move out my way…finally I said to him “you better move faster than this I’m about to throw up on you” his little bony ass moved pretty damn quickly. I made my way to the closet of a bathroom…

So another thing I’ll share with you is that I’m also claustrophobic, so it is extremely rare that I use a bathroom on a plane. I sat down on the toilet and started to breathe and talk myself through the panic attack. Truth was I didn’t need to shit or throw up I just needed space and now I’ve locked myself in this bathroom where it looked like the walls were closing in on me. I looked at the floor, telling myself this will pass. Then paranoia kicked in and I was concerned that I wasn’t going to come out of this panic attack so I started thinking more thoughts that made me panic more…”what if I pass out in here and nobody knows I’m in here”, “what if they have to make an emergency landing because of me, it will be all over the news”, “wait, if they do have to make an emergency landing where the fuck are they going to make it at, we are flying over the ocean” “Omg, what if nobody finds my body in here” …this went on for a long period of time. About 20 minutes had passed and I was still in the bathroom with no end to this panic attack …I honestly thought “this is where I’m going to spend the next few hours of my life, locked in this bathroom”

Finally I looked up and the light bulb went off in my head…splash myself with water I thought. So away I went pushing down on the tap that streams water for 1.1 seconds…this was definitely a challenge but I did it. I rubbed the water on the back of my neck, on my arms, on my face…avoiding my newly done lashes of course. I’m not even sure if that water is drinkable but I was chugging back drop by drop I could get in my cupped hands and about 10 minutes later I was back to normal. Out of the washroom I go. We landed and all was well.

The Day Trip…

This just deserves a line or two because it’s an international problem too…the bus was about to leave me behind when we stopped in the city because guess what? I was late getting back to it. Anthony was on the bus and didn’t give two shits if it left me behind, he wasn’t being left behind. Uncle told the driver I was missing, they came looking for me, found me and on the bus I went.

Let’s Go Home…

The journey back home was no different. We made our way to our gate. We had 2 hours to spare before the flight took off. I tasked Anthony with watching the bags while I went to check out the airport. I had every intention of going back and getting him once I knew where everything was in the airport.

Well, what had happened was that I had decided to eat the very small amount of chocolate I had left (edible) because I didn’t want to leave it in the room and I knew I couldn’t take it back with me because of the dogs at the airport. I know what you’re thinking, why not dump it somewhere but honestly it was a small fraction of what I had taken on the way down and I was sure it wouldn’t have any affect on me. Truth was I forgot I ate it after I journeyed off down the airport. I stopped in the duty free shop and bought a bottle of perfume. At the time I wasn’t even sure why I was buying it, it smelled good I guess that’s why I bought it. As I’m leaving the duty free shop I hear “Sherry”, my Dominican friend from Toronto was on the same flight down and back so I stopped to have a drink with him but only felt hungry. I ordered food, he ordered a drink. He was telling all kinds of crazy ass stories about his visit. I told him I don’t know why but I bought perfume in the duty free, he laughed. I then was trying to explain something else to him and I couldn’t put a sentence together…I was so confused. Finally it hit me, those crumbs had kicked in. I said “fuck, I bought that damn perfume because I’m high and that’s why I can’t explain anything to you…we both laughed our asses off.

There was a final boarding call for our flight home…we were still sitting sharing stories. I looked down towards the gate and saw the look of pure panic on Anthony’s face…he yelled “we’re going to miss the flight home” I laughed and told him to relax…we were the last 5 people to board the plane.

We made it to Toronto. We had a 3 hour layover. Anthony was adamant that we should go sit at our gate, so to ease his mind we went to our gate. I spent some time uploading photos and videos to Facebook and he headed to the lounge bar to watch the hockey game and have a beer. I eventually ventured over and sat with him and watched the game with him. The Penguins were winning and he was cheering them on. I had looked at the Westjet sign at our gate and it said “Winnipeg” In our excitement about the Pen’s lead we didn’t hear the gate change for our flight. It was getting late so I checked our boarding passes, “boarding at 9:20” it was 9:50…flight left at 10:00.

The gate change was literally next to our original gate…we made our flight with no issues and low and behold home sweet home never felt so damn good. Thanks for travelling with me. #sherryannecrowe

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