Evacuation

I am perched for my second leg.  Two hiccoughs so far. Both solved.  4WayTaxi didn't show up so I left my poor wee Honda at the airport.  I scrambled and have a rescue lined up, but when left unplugged, this little sub-compact balks at the cold.  Support crew assures she'll be settled into her 75day spot soon.  Second - my carry-on was too big for the smaller aircraft  specs.  Under she goes, all the way through to PV. ThirtyBuxThirtyBuxThirtyBux.  At least I saved on the cabfare.  Boycott 4Way. Grrrr.

So YYC is known to me, but I guess I've always flown domestic from here. Busy Terminal.  I realized I needed to find Terminal D, so since it's a long layover, I meandered, following the ceiling sign gods.  On and on.  And further yet.  And drastically diminishing population.  Where was I going? I finally reached a dead end and a lonely airport worker motioned to me.
"Do you have a boarding pass?"
"What's in there?" I asked.
He elbow pointed at a sign indicating a few food stops and shops, so I committed to the unknown.  A scan of my boarding pass, a crystally mirrored tiptoe through the gauntlet called DutyFree, and I walked into a quiet, unpopulated world of upscale shops and bored retail workers.  I even got a free facial with miracle collagen creme (nobody was around to gawk).  The stuff was only $500 for a jar, and for today only, I could get it for the one-time-only miraculous price of two hundred and fifty, Canadian, and she would absorb the tax just like DutyFree.  I left with a free sliver of organic lily-of-the-valley soap and without the face creme, which, if I gave her my email address, I could get at the secret bargain price, just by contacting her directly, any time.

People in airports always seem so cool, collected and fasionable, and then, just as I pondered my misfittedness, the guy with the legbrace strapped over his trousers elbow punted his beer and his wife hollered a balsphemous expletive at him.  And life felt more normal.
Here in international departures, it is a quiet side of YYC. I still see snow upon snow through the glass and will put up my feet and wait to launch myself from minus 29 to plus 29.  Atchooo!
~~n post#6 day1/75