Not quite as planned

This was the view of Wurzburg from the pedistrian walking bridge over the river.

A view of the local castle up on the hill from the pedistrian walking bridge

This was a picture of Merja and I at the start of the Bronze medal game on Saturday.

We left Prague at about 5:30 on Saturday, destined for Wurzburg where we would spend the night. We made a stop at the Czech/Germany border at about 7:00 for dinner (McDonalds), the players were happy with this, as many of them haven't eaten this for 7 months since they started training for the event, but it wasn't really high on my list of places I wanted to eat. I got one of their salads which wasn't too bad. We were then back on the road, and got to Wurzburg at about 10:00 pm. We checked in, and then I went for a walk around the town to see what there was to see. This was another very nice, German city. The population is about 140,000 but it has a very small feel to it, although the main street we were on was quite busy with pedistrian traffic on Saturday night. The main street, seemed to be a newer shopping district that had a lot of small shops, and a few blocks over there were older churchs and buildings with impressive archatechture. I was pretty tired from the trip so went back to the hotel and went to bed.

The next morning I was up at 6:30, and couldn't get back to sleep (likely anticipation of finally getting to see my family again) and the bus wasn't leaving until 10:30 so I got up, made sure everything was packed, and went for a walk again. There was a light rain falling, but it wasn't too bad. I went back to the hotel at about 7:30 and had breakfast, and then was out walking again around 8:30. I did take some pictures (as I figured it is easier to take too many and delete over deciding after I get home, I really wish I had a picture of XYZ). Then it was back to the hotel to check out at about 10:00 and get ready to load on the bus. There was another 1 1/2 hours to get to the Frankfurt airport and we should be there around noon for our 2:40 flight.

We got to the airport just as we expected, but started to run into problems right away. The tour operator in Canada didn't let them know that our group (with all our excess baggage) was going to be there. This took quite a while to get sorted around, and eventually the coach for Canada East ended up just picking up the tab for the excess baggage and he will sort it out later with the tour operator. However the problems were far from over. Karen (the other Canadian ref) and Beth apparently didn't have tickets for the flight. They had booked their own flight to Germany as they wanted to go to France first, and it would appear their return flight didn't get booked. They are number 4 & 5 on the standby list for the flight (they had to pay and will get their money back) they will have to wait and see if they get on.

We went to see if there was anything to eat, after walking around for a little while, I didn't see much so decided on a sandwich. The Frankfurt airport reminds me a lot of Pearson, both in appearance and lack of decent quick food. Now it was time to clear security, and there were no problems with that, so it was off to the gate.

About 20 minutes before our scheduled boarding time, Karen and Beth got to the gate, apparently they did manage to get on this flight, a good thing too, as this flight was $350 Euros each, if they had to take the 5:00 Air Canada flight it was going to be $3500 Euros each (both are one way prices). We then had an announcement that the flight was going to be 15 minutes delayed due to the plane we are using was late arriving. Not ideal, but not the end of the world.

We loaded onto the plane, and waited for a bit. The pilot then came on and said we had some technical issues, and need to replace a part on the plane, it would be about an hour to get the part and have it installed. Now it was getting tight on whether I was going to be able to see the kids before they went to bed tonight, so was starting to get concerned, but would rather they find the faulty parts on the ground, as opposed to after we take off...

After an hour, the pilot came on again and said there was no sign of the part, so we might as well deplane and wait in the terminal. Great, now I definately won't see the kids before they go to bed. So I get off the plane, and make a call home from a payphone, Sharron was disappointed, but knows there is nothing I can do about it.

At about 5:00 German time we were back on the plane and ready to go. We should be landing at about 8:00 in Toronto, and if all goes well I will be home around 10:00 (which would be nice as I need to be at work in the morning). The flight was fairly uneventful, I found our flight path interesting, as we flew up over the southern portion of Greenland and then down through northern Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec and Ontario, I guess this is the best path to avoid flying directly into the winds of the jetstream. At about 7:45 we started circling northeast of Toronto. After a little while, the pilot came on and said there were thunderstorms north of Toronto, and we were going to try an approach from the south, so we circled south over Rochester and tried to get into the airport. This is when the pilot came on again and said, the storms were now fully over Pearson and the airport was closed. We are going to have to head to Hamilton. I thought this should be interesting as Hamilton is quite small, and I would be interested to see if they have the capacity to handle an international flight with this number of people. We ended up having to go well west of Hamilton (looked like half way to London) and circle back to get the right approach, and it was still very distrubing, as we were coming down there was lightning all around us.

Once on the ground we waiting for information, and waited and waited. After about an hour, the pilot said that we were waiting for our turn to deal with the ground crews as there were a large number of Toronto flights that had been rerouted to Hamilton. After about 3 hours the pilot told us that Hamilton doesn't have the ability to process everyone (I picture 2 border guards trying to process 30 international flights of a couple hundred people each), so we were going to fly back to Toronto once the weather cleared and we got a flight plan. After another hour of waiting (now at 4 hours) the pilot came on and said that although the weather is now clearing, he and the co pilot have reached their maximum flying time allowed, and we were going to need to get a new flight crew before we can continue on for safety reasons. Thankfully, there was a flight that just came in from Cancun to Hamilton whose pilots haven't reached their maximum time yet, and we could just steal them. This is a much better option than having to fly someone in.

After sitting on the runway in Hamilton for 5 hours on a very hot plane (the air conditioner doesn't work very well when you aren't moving) we were off again. Our flight plan was for an 18 minute flight at a crusing altitude of 6000'. After waiting for so long, I guess I was hoping for something more than that. But oh well at least we will get home.

We landed at about 1:40 am, and got through customs without too many problems (other than the guard asking me why Canada didn't win gold, as if it was my fault, apparently some of the players had already been through), and all the bags made it safely. Now it was time for the drive home, should I be concerned that I am now making a 70 km drive after being up for the last 27 hours? I felt okay, so it was off to the parking lot and heading home. There were a couple of points that I felt like my head was getting heavy, but the drive was uneventful. I got home shortly before 4:00am.

I hoped to be able to sleep in, but for some reason I was awake at 7:00 am. I guess my body is still on German time and thinks it is 1:00 pm.