5:30 am found me in a Jiffy Cab on the way to the airport (following a night of the kind of sleep where you only doze off long enough to dream you've overslept!!). I was not traveling myself but seeing someone off, and, after they went through security, I grabbed a large Tim Horton - no apostrophe because they're in the States now - s coffee and walked up the stairs to the observation deck. This is a great spot, bright and quiet, kept, for some reason, in near-secrecy by airport management, but it is there, accessible in all its hushed and inviting glory.
Children like it. The last time I was there, two fathers were present with an assortment of girls and boys. I drowsily (it's always 5:30am when I'm at the airport; it's like a new travel rule) half-eavesdropped as the men discussed recent car repairs and then segued into the difficulties of planning a successful honeymoon trip, a problem I gathered that had been encountered in the past and now in effect remedied, or made up for, some years later by the two wives deciding to go off, themselves, to Las Vegas. The various children were out of their minds "seeing" their moms in every round plane window, waving.
This morning, a young mother sat on the window ledge with two small kids; they too were avidly interested in precisely locating their dad within the various metal leviathans rolling smoothly from the gates and along the runways. As the planes taxied towards take-off, set against the Torbay pine trees, the little boy said, "Look, they're like sharks, white sharks swimming in the trees." And he was right.
(Image: www.jetplanes.)
P. S. The N. Q. is heading to the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival - you'll find us back at this post on Tuesday.
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