Greg Wesson's Esoteric Globe

Ah, February rolls around and a young North American man’s mind turns to one thing. Cheerleaders... Oh, and chicken wings, and beer, and the hail Mary pass and nickle defences. Okay, a young man’s mind turns to more than one thing, but they are all wrapped up in the same event. Super Bowl!

Yes, it is time for that annual celebration of all things American and bombastic! Fireworks! The Who! Queen Latifah singing! Six hours of pre-game coverage!

This year I took myself to Amsterdam to watch the big game, a continuation of my silly “Super Bowls around the World” quest that has seen me watching American football in such non-American places like Costa Rica, Chile and Tanzania (though not so successfully there).

Amsterdam is in the Netherlands, and is known by North Americans mostly as a place to get sex and drugs. The city is famous for it’s raunchy nightlife, mostly centre around the red light district.

A red light above the door means you can look into the window and decide if you want to spend some time with the young lady working there. Sometimes, though, they are old ladies. And sometimes, they aren’t ladies at all, though they look like ladies.

If sex isn’t your vice, then there is always the dope. Coffee shops are quite popular in Amsterdam, where you can go and buy and smoke marijuana.

What Amsterdam is less well known for (at least in the circle of friends I ran with back in Canada) is the pretty town centre with it’s canals, narrow streets, even narrow housing and even windmills!

I, however, was there neither for the sex nor for the drugs nor even for the pretty sight seeing. I was there for the American football. This year featured the Indianapolis Colts against the New Orleans Saints. While the pundits put their money on the Colts winning the game, the Saints were emotional favourites for most people. The city of New Orleans obviously has been through a lot in the past five years, and I think most people felt like they deserved some good news.

I watched the game at the Satellite Sports Cafe on the Leidseplein, a square in the south-west part of the centre of town.

The bar was jam-packed, with folks even sitting on the stairs between the two levels to get views of the game. I made friends with a group of guys sitting at the bar, and when one of their friends left before the game started, they offered me his stool. So I had a nice front row seat for the game.

The group included two Dutch and one American. Myself, the American and one of the Dutchmen were cheering for New Orleans - as was most of the bar. The other Dutch guy, though, was cheering for Indianapolis. I don’t think he had a decent reason to cheer for them other than being contrarian.

“They are the better team,” he said to me. “Peyton Manning is the best quarterback in the game. They have a very potent offence.”

“True,” I said. “The Colts do put points up on the board. However, they are too good. It’s boring - like cheering for a bunch of accountants. They are probably really good at their jobs, but it isn’t always exciting to watch.”

An American girl came around selling “squares.” Squares is a form of gambling, where you pay money to buy a square on a 10 by 10 grid, with each axis being one of the two teams. After all the squares have been purchased, the number from 0 to 9 are revealed along the axis in a random sequence. At the end of the half and the end of the game, the person who has the box that matches the last digits of the score wins some of the money.

I bought two squares for a euro each. When the numbers were revealed, I had Colts: 8, New Orleans: 2 and Colts: 0, New Orleans: 6. The first square wasn’t great, as there aren’t too many scores where it is easy to get a 2 as the last digit. American football scores in 7s and 3s, so you want to look at multiples of 7s and 3s and their combinations.

My other box was pretty decent, though. 0 and 6 are both easy numbers to get in football. Zero is were both teams start (obviously), so a team not scoring gets a 0. A touchdown and a field goal are worth 7 and 3, respectively, so scoring one of each gets 10 (which ends with 0, and thus in the “0” box). 6, similarly, is two field goals.

The half ended with Indianapolis up 10 points to 6 for the Saints. That was 0 and 6, one of my squares, so I got 50 euros paid out! Awesome - especially seeing as pints were going for 5 euros each.

The Super Bowl spectacle included a number of big musical names this year, as usual. Country singer Carrie Underwood sung the national anthem, and Queen Latifah sung America The Beautiful before the game. At half time, The Who came out to play - doing a medley of their hits and even breaking out the green lasers just like the video for Baba O’Riley. Pete Townshend even windmilled on his guitar - no doubt a reference to my watching the game in the spiritual home of the windmill - The Netherlands.

The game continued, and New Orleans took control in the fourth quarter, scoring a touch down on offence, and then picking off and scoring during an Indianapolis offence series. New Orleans ended up winning 31 to 17. No more squares money for me, but I was more than happy to see the team I had picked to root for win.

I wandered out into the Amsterdam night - actually early morning - and back along the canals to my hotel. I smiled, thinking about the party in New Orleans. I realized that I had watched the game and cheered for New Orleans in a city that shares a lot in common with it. Both are known as party capitals and both are places where the waters are only kept at bay by lots of pumps and dykes. They really could be sister cities.

I end, then, with congratulations to the city of New Orleans from her spiritual twin - Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Upon arriving at the Courtyard Marriott hotel on my recent trip to Toronto, I bypassed the regular line and wandered right up to the “Elite Guest Check-in” desk.

“Checking in for Wesson,” I said, handing my credit card to the front-desk clerk.

The front-desk clerk punched my name into the computer and said. “Yes, Mr. Wesson. Welcome back. You are staying with us for four nights?”

I nodded.

The front-desk clerk continued. “Excellent. We have your Platinum number on file. As your arrival gift, would you like the bonus points, or would you prefer to get something from our Market,” the clerk asked, motioning towards the small shop for snacks and drinks.

“I’ll take the points,” I said. I smiled to myself and thought, “That’s another two-hundred and fifty more points towards my goal.”

~ ~ ~

At Home In Airworld

"I live somewhere else, in the margins of my itineraries. I call it Airworld; the scene, the place, the style. My hometown papers are USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. The big-screen Panasonics in the club rooms broadcast all the news I need, with an emphasis on the markets and the weather. Airworld is a nation within a nation, with its own language, architecture, mood, and even its own currency - the token economy of airline bonus miles that I've come to value more than dollars."
- Up In The Air, (book) Walter Kirn

I went this past weekend to see the new movie Up In the Air, based upon a book which I had previously read by Walter Kirn. In the movie, George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a corporate down-sizing consultant who spends much of his life travelling for work. Though Bingham has an apartment in Omaha, he feels more at home in “Airworld” – literally “up in the air” on the airplanes and on the ground in the airports, hotel suites and rental cars that make up his travelling life. Bingham has a goal, one he is slightly embarrassed to admit at times. It is to join the elite group of American Airlines customers who have amassed 10 million air miles.

Every so often a piece of creative work comes along that seems to capture significant elements of my life, the kind of thing that makes me sit back and wonder how the creator knew so well what I was thinking. In my early 20s, it was the book Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland, where the protagonist Tyler so embodied the way I felt about the world, I thought about changing my name to Tylerwtravels. Then, once I started working as a software engineer in Ottawa, Dilbert came along and captured the surreal world of the modern software sweatshop. After moving from technical side of computer programming more into the business side of solution design, Mike Judge created Office Space, capturing perfectly the inanities of the modern office.

Now, Walter Kirn with his book and Jason Reitman with his movie have captured my life for the last 10 years. The years I spent travelling for business, taking me across Canada and the USA, and a life that has continued now I am resettled in England. Ryan Bingham – the character George Clooney plays in the movie – is me. Though, obviously, I am better looking…

I tend not too talk too much about my job here in the blog. Partially this is to protect my clients, and by extension my job, by not revealing too much about what I do, but I have also not written much about travelling for business. There have been a few mentions here and there, – most notably in my early blog entry on travelling as a consultant.

I haven’t really written about some of the most important parts of business travel though, and that is the collection of miles and points and gaining elite status. I think I have shied away from talking about this out both a fear of embarrassment as well as concern about coming off as a complete braggart or arrogant git. Now that Gorgeous George has made it all right, I can come out of the closet.

I am Gregwtravels and I am an airline-and-hotel-point-aholic.

~ ~ ~

More Than Just Points

“As a Marriott Rewards member, you’ve earned more than points. You’ve earned the recognition you so richly deserve. And you’ve earned the privileges and benefits that celebrate your travel life.”
- Marriott Rewards website

In the movie “Up In The Air,” George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, travelling consultant and card-carrying member of the loyalty programs for American Airlines, Hilton Hotels and Hertz Car Rental. Bingham is an elite member of the programs, allowed to skip the regular queues and get upgrades to business class seats. Like Bingham, I travel regularly for business and also am a member of a number of loyalty programs.

I am a member of a number of airline programs. My primary program in North America was Air Canada’s Aeroplan program, where I collected air miles for my flights from my home base in Toronto. As a secondary program, I collected points with Continental’s OnePass program. I also have a miles account with American Airlines AAdvantage program, though since moving to England have decided to drop American Airlines and collect points on a British Airways Executive Club account instead.

I had these three accounts to cover each of the main airline alliances. There are three main airline alliances in the world – Star Alliance, Oneworld and Skyteam. Air Canada is a member of Star Alliance, along with other airlines like United, US Airways, Lufthansa and ANA. No matter if I am flying with Air Canada, United or Lufthansa, I can present my Air Canada Aeroplan card to collect air miles into my account. A few years ago, I had three airline programs that covered the three alliances – Air Canada for Star Alliance, Continental for Skyteam and American for Oneworld.

Changes within the alliances recently mean that I now have two Star Alliance accounts (Air Canada and Continental), two Oneworld accounts (BA and AA), and no Skyteam airlines. No matter, though. If I fly a Skyteam airline in the next little while, it is no problem to open an account.

Unlike Clooney’s character in the movie, I’m not a top tier flyer in any of my airline programs, and never have been. I’ve flown a lot, but I am a long way from coming anywhere close to having collected 10 million miles. Air Canada Aeroplan’s top tier is Super Elite, which requires collection 100,000 miles or 95 flights in a single year. The closest I ever came to that was when I was working in Denver in 2000. I amassed over 60,000 miles that year. Most years when I lived back in North America I would collect between 40,000 and 50,000 miles, which was enough to get the next highest level – Aeroplan Elite. In the past 10 years, I have made Elite status 7 times, got Prestige (the status one down from Elite) 2 years and wound up this year with no status at all – a lowly regular, back of the plane flier.

While I wasn’t a top tier flier, Aeroplan Elite provided benefits. Most obviously is that all those points can be used to book free flights. I have flown to South America, Japan, Europe and Africa all for free. Elite status also provides you with the ability to use the airline lounges at the airport, where you can get free food and drink, free wifi and a comfortable and quiet place to relax before your flight. My Air Canada Aeroplan Elite status was honoured by any airline in the Star Alliance, allowing me to use the ANA lounge in Tokyo, the SAS lounge at Heathrow and United Red Carpet Clubs across the USA.

Elite members can board earlier than the regular flying public, which comes in handy on early morning flights full of business travellers all trying to store a roller bag and laptop in the limited amount of overhead bin space. Often people who don’t travel wonder why business travellers are so against checking bags. As George Clooney’s character explains in the movie, it’s a matter of time. Imagine that you fly two flights a week, 40 weeks a year, which is about what I used to do. Say checking a bag takes 10 minutes before your flight, and you wait 20 minutes after landing to pick up your bag. That’s 30 minutes a flight by two flights a week by forty weeks a year. That works out to 2400 minutes, or 40 hours of extra time. I’ve got better things to do with almost two days worth of time every year.

Finally, elite status also gets upgrades. Since I started travelling for business in 1997, every year air travel has gotten more and more complex, crowded and annoying. The only thing that keeps getting better every year seems to be the offerings for business class. When I first started flying, business class meant a bigger seat, a glass of champagne and a place to hang your coat. Now most airlines have lie flat pods with individual entertainment systems as their business class offering.

I may have never been a top tier flier, but I did better by the hotel programs. I once read that there are two types of business travellers, broken broadly into the categories of “sales” and “consulting.” Folks who travel for sales do a lot of short trips. They often fly out to a location, have a few intense meetings, and then fly home the same night. Sales people are on a plane most days. Consultants, on the other hand, tend to fly out on a Monday and back on a Thursday night, going to the same place for weeks on end. They don’t fly as much, but do spend a lot more nights in hotels. Sales folks easily make the top elite status on airlines, but struggle to get to the top tier of their hotel programs. Consultants easily get top tier in their hotel programs, but often struggle to make top status on the airlines.

I was a consultant, so hotel programs were where I often hit the top tier of status. I am primarily a member of the Marriott Rewards program, but also have loyalty accounts with Hilton, Starwood (Westin and Sheraton), Accor and ICI (Holiday Inns and Intercontinental hotels). Every dollar spent at a hotel earns points. Like with the airlines, points can be redeemed for free nights. The amount you stay also entitles you to elite status levels. Marriott Rewards Platinum, which I am, entitles me to free upgrades, priority check-in and access to the concierge lounge for free breakfast and evening snacks.

Like Ryan Bingham in the movie, I have a secret goal as well. That goal is lifetime Gold status at Marriott hotels. Marriott has an unpublished but widely known (for those who are frequent guests) lifetime status program. For customers who have been members of the program for 12 years and have achieved a status level in the program, you can get a free, lifetime status level of Silver, Gold or Platinum.

To become a lifetime Gold member, you need to have been a member of the program for 12 years, spent 800 nights in Marriott hotels and amassed 1,600,000 Marriott Reward points. As of writing this, I have been a member of Marriott Rewards for 9 years, 6 months and 26 days. I have spent 753 paid nights in Marriott hotels and collected 1,566,460 points, leaving me to get 47 nights and 33,540 points to achieve that Gold status.

Like Ryan Bingham in the film, I must admit that I am a little embarrassed to admit this as one of my goals. Crossing that “1.6 million points and 800 nights” barrier is just passing an artificial finish line. In fact, it probably isn’t really a “finish” line at all, as I doubt upon reaching the goal I’ll just stop travelling. Also, someone recently pointed out on an internet forum I read that getting lifetime Gold status means that I spent two years and seventy nights in Marriott hotels.

Despite those good reasons not to care, I do. I’d like to achieve that goal. Perhaps it is just a silly boy project, but to me it is like getting a medal for endurance.

In addition to airline and hotel programs, the third key program in the stable of the business traveller’s frequent flyer accounts would be with car rental companies. While the car rental companies don’t offer the same type of earning and redemption potential as airlines and hotels, the benefits of being part of the program are clear when getting a car. Going to the car rental desk and renting a car requires an agent to see your license and credit card and then typing for a seemingly endless time on a computer terminal before you get your car. By joining a “frequent renters” program, you can just walk up, take your car and drive away with just a flash of your license. That can save you up to 30 minutes on a Monday morning after landing at a new airport.

Those really dedicated to earning points and status can find a whole lot of other opportunities to gain as well. There are credit cards that give air miles with each purchase, access cards for airline lounges, mortgages that earn air miles with each payment, and even other products that gain points.

One extreme example of earning air miles without ever stepping foot on a plane was when a man purchased a few thousand dollars worth of pudding and in exchange got 31 round trips to Europe. In 1999, a pudding company was having a promotion that allowed you to collect American Airlines AAdvantage miles for every UPC from their products that you mailed in. Civil Engineer David Phillips was walking through the grocery store when he spotted the offer. He did some quick math (as engineers are wont to do), and figured out that the air miles on offer were worth much more than the cost of the pudding.

He wound up buying $3,140 of pudding, and in return he received 1,253,000 air miles. Those who are knowledgeable about such things value an American Airlines AAdvantage mile at being worth about $0.01, meaning that Mr. Phillips could exchange his air miles for approximately $12,530 worth of air fare. Mr. Phillips couldn’t eat all 12,150 cups of pudding himself, so he donated the pudding to the Salvation Army, for which he received their help in removing and mailing in the UPC codes. In addition to the air miles, the donation of the pudding got Mr. Phillips an $815 charitable tax write off.

Sometimes when I talk to non-travelling friends about my hotel and airline programs, they say it all seems too confusing. “How did you learn all this?” they ask. Partially it was from coworkers when I first started travelling. Much as Ryan Bingham teaches his young coworker Natalie Keener (played by vampire-bait Anna Kendrick in the film) about packing a bag, moving through airport security and joining the airline and hotel programs, more experienced travellers did the same for me when I first started hitting the road.

The other place I learned, and continue to learn about maximising my frequent flier experience, was from the internet forum Flyertalk. Flyertalk is an online community of frequent travellers who want to make the most out of their membership in frequent flier and frequent guest programs, and also those that collect points through other means like credit cards or promotions.

Why do this, you may ask. Why go to all this trouble to earn status just to make you more comfortable while on the road? Why not just get a regular job that keeps you on the ground and at home, where you can be comfortable all the time?

The answer, of course, is deeper than just airline points, and is of course the real thrust of the movie and the book. What sort of person chooses this lifestyle? What do I get from being a constant traveller?

What is the emotional impact, both good and bad, of living the life of a road warrior?

~ ~ ~

The Hotel As Home and Fellow Travellers as Friends

When you grow older a dreadful, horrible sensation will come over you. It's called loneliness, and you think you know what it is now, but you don't… Don't worry - loneliness is the most universal sensation on the planet. Just remember one fact - loneliness will pass. You will survive and you will be a better human for it.
- Shampoo Planet, Douglas Coupland

“Isolated? I’m Surrounded.”
- From the movie Up In The Air

Like Up In The Air's Ryan Bingham, I have spent much of the last eleven years travelling for business. And like Bingham, I too have joined a number of loyalty programs with airlines, hotels and car rental companies to earn rewards and maximise my comfort on the road.

Enough about the mechanics of my life on the road. After all, the movie isn’t really about earning airline miles. The movie is about the main character’s life, and the key question is if his life is too removed from the other people in his life. At one point in the film, Ryan Bingham’s sister says to him, “you are awfully isolated the way you live.”

“Isolated?” responds Bingham. “I’m surrounded.”

A few people have over the years have said that my life on the road must be lonely. I have never found it so. It is a life that favours a breadth of relationships over relationships of incredible depth. Across my years of consulting I have met a lot of people, worked and lived in close quarters with them, and then moved on. Some of these people I have kept in contact with, some I have lost complete touch with, others are those quasi-friends that we all have nowadays – names in my list of Facebook friends and Linkedin contacts who you never hear from.

Most of the people I am still in contact with are other consultants. Some I communicate with (mostly via email) on a regular basis, some I only speak with once in a blue moon. Yet I would still consider them all friends. How can I consider someone I speak with once every six months a friend, you might ask? It is because we have lived the same life, so we understand the long silences between our chats.

The project experience is enveloping. Consulting projects are short periods of intense work. As most of the consultants are “on the road,” you spend both your time at work and your time after work together. The “work-hard, play-hard” mentality abounds. The intensity of the experience bonds those who went through it together. Once we have gone our separate ways, that bond still exists. Even if we haven’t talked to each other in six months, when we speak again we are fast friends, for we both have lived the life of a road warrior, and know that just because we haven’t been in touch doesn’t mean we don’t care. It just means that we’ve been away, on the road and knuckling down somewhere far away.

I’m very comfortable with this style of friendship. I am an outgoing person, and enjoy the constant opportunities to meet new people. That being said, it certainly isn’t a life for everyone. I have had a few friends slip by the way-side, especially those who don’t travel and thus don’t understand why I haven’t been in touch in months. Romantic relationships are often very hard to maintain when one partner is on the road as well.

This is the core conflict of the film. I took creative writing in high school, so I know that you can’t have a story without some sort of conflict. Bingham starts the film happy with his solo life on the road. He talks about attachments – both the physical things we all have like houses, cars, furniture and the emotional links of relationships – as being items that you carry that weigh you down. For Bingham, discarding these things leads to a life of freedom. In Bingham’s motivational speaker parlance, his is an empty backpack.

As the film progresses, Ryan Bingham faces a choice, between maintaining his lone wolf lifestyle of being on the road or developing deeper relationships with the people in his life. Bingham is faced to look into his empty backpack and question whether discarding all the relationships in his life have at the same time hollowed him out and left him an empty man.

I’ve had moments like that as well, times when I have questioned if my life on the road has left me with a theme park kind of life – a lot of exciting experiences but ultimately lacking in any depth. For me, though, these moments of doubt have always past quickly. A few weeks at home, and I would find myself longing to get out of town and away to some new place again. I’d land in some new place, settle into a hotel room for the night, feel the beautiful lack of domestic responsibility, and it would feel like home.

Things have changed somewhat since moving to London and becoming an expat. However, I am not far from my old life on the road. I work for a global consulting company, and we have clients all over the world. Last year I spent 6 months working at clients outside of London, though I travelled by train rather than plane to get to them, more Trackworld than Airworld. My current project has kept me in London for the last 6 months, but the London based project will eventually end and my next project could be in Santiago, Stuttgart or Singapore. In a few months time, I could be taking to the road once more.

Perhaps I will come eventually to want to give up this life of the business nomad forever, but for now I am still excited by the opportunity to get back on the road. After all, I still have to get those outstanding 47 nights at the Marriott to earn my lifetime status.

Newsflash! Winter is cold and snowy! Colder than the recommended temperature of a freezer. That’s what the lady said on TV during the news.

I am beginning to doubt everything I was told about England before I got here. Not only don’t folks wear suits to work (for the most part), but the winters are not milder and less snowy than Canada, as promised. After last years “most snow in almost 20 years” bru-haha, this winter is proving to be the coldest and snowiest in 30 years! Every year can’t surely be a record, can it?

Apparently it is. So cold in some parts of the north that the temperatures dropped down below the “recommended temperature of a freezer,” as the lady on the news exclaimed.

That’s minus 17 Celsius, for anyone interested in such things. Sure, that is cold, but it isn’t quite Portage and Main...

Of course, I have it easy, working from home as I do. No reason to go outside unless my supplies run low, and then a quick (though icy) trip down to the Tescos. Mostly I just stay inside and Rock ‘n’ Roll.

So while the news makes it out to be a dire catastrophe, I think its kind of pretty. Especially now that the Regent’s Canal has frozen over. The ice is thick enough to stand on (judging by some kids trying it earlier). Maybe it is time for a Regent’s Canal Frost Fair.

The clock has struck midnight on 2009, and we now enter 2010.

My 2009 didn’t end so well. I never made it to Morocco, nor even a weekend away. Due to an unfortunate family situation, I wound up flying back to Toronto on Boxing Day. In the end, the cancellation of my flight to Morocco was probably for the best, as it freed me up to be able to fly to Toronto instead and be with my extended family at a trying and emotional time. And even though it was due to unfortunate circumstances, it was nice to see all my extended family during the holiday period.

Truth be told, though, I was never really that excited about Morocco. Even sitting at the airport on December 21st, before the weather closed in and the flight board showed delay after delay, I wasn’t that excited about going to Morocco. I found myself anxious about travelling to a new country, and that anxiety was overwhelming any excitement for my trip.

When my flight finally got cancelled and I couldn’t rebook, secretly I found myself relived that I would get to stay home.

Then came the news that brought be back to Toronto. I landed on Boxing Day and checked into a hotel in downtown Toronto. I spent four days visiting with family and friends, returning each night to my hotel.

On my final morning in Toronto, as I packed my bag and prepared to check out and return to London, I was suddenly struck by the urge to head somewhere other than London. Just a quick trip away, but some place exotic. Yeah, that would really hit the spot. A nice trip away someplace... someplace far away.

I realized that my anxiety while waiting for that Morocco flight was because I was completely out of practice. I haven’t been travelling for work since August, instead spending my time working in London. While working in London has been great, and its allowed me to learn a lot about my adopted home and cement some really excellent friendships, it has also lead me to become something of a homebody. I think I’ve been cocooning.

All that not travelling, and I’ve lost my sea legs. Travel begets travel. Being on the road makes me want to be on the road more. Being at home, and I want to spend more time at home.

So, who knows what 2010 holds. The London based project won’t last forever, and it is probably only a matter of time until I am on the road again. Then I’ll probably get my sea legs back and be excited to travel again.

Travel begets travel. All I need to do is take that first step out of London again.

Yesterday, I travelled down from my flat to Gatwick airport to catch a flight to Marrakech, Morocco. You might expect, therefore, that I am writing this while sipping mint tea on the roof of a riad overlooking the bustling Moroccan markets. I am not though. I am writing this from my London flat on a grey and cold day.

Due to the completely and totally unforeseeable winter circumstances - snow and cold - travel has been a complete mess here in the UK. On the weekend snow and ice had ferries, the Eurostar, trains and planes all sitting idly instead of moving people to their destinations. Yesterday, on Monday, more snow was projected later in the day, however the day started out clear but cold.

I headed down to Gatwick, and things looked good. There were a few delayed flights, but nothing more than 30 minutes. About half an hour before my flight, we were called to the gate. Walking towards the gate along a high elevated walkway, I could see that the clear, cold morning was turning into a wet, icy afternoon.

My flight was scheduled to take off at 3:30. Just after 3:00, Gatwick closed its runway. The runway stayed closed for the next 4 plus hours. I watched the departures board. All it would tell me is "Marrakech - Please Wait," just like most of the rest of the flights.

Between 6:00 and 7:00, BA cancelled all their flights that had been scheduled before 7:00 PM. EasyJet held off cancelling, keeping us all to "please wait." Around 7:00, the first few easyJet flights started to be cancelled. At about 7:30, my flight was cancelled. So was every other easyJet flight on the board. The airline information desk became a mad house.

I, the smart traveller, decided to skip the queue and go online. I went to the easyJet site and looked to switch my flight. There was nothing for the 22nd or 23rd of December. There was an early flight on the 24th of December.

This is where I made a mistake. I should have booked it, but I didn't. It was three days away, which seemed so far away, and would cut my vacation down to 6 days instead of 9 days. I think I was still in disbelief that it was happening, I think.

Instead I left the airport and went back home (on delayed trains). As I stood on the platform at Gatwick's train station, British Airway flights started taking off above me, the runway obviously finally re-opened.

On the train ride home I let the seven hour delay and finally cancellation sink in and situation become real. Once home, I went to rebook, but it was too late. Even the 24th wasn't available now. Nothing until after Christmas. Accepting those flights would turn a 9 day vacation into a 2 or 3 day vacation. Not really worth it, I felt. So instead, I asked for a refund.

Now it looks like I might spend Christmas here in London. Due to all the travel disruption over the past 4 days, there is an awful backlog of travellers trying to get some place. I may try to book something else, but I'm afraid that the airports and train stations will be chaotic places with too many people trying to get onto too few travel options.

Such is travel at winter. Sometimes you just can't get away.