Vacation Entry 5 – Wedding and Pre-flight Fun

The first thing to note is that I cannot seem to find my little Canon camera, and it’s the one I took all the photos with at Rob and Anna’s wedding. So while I’m pretty sure it will turn up, unfortunately I do not have any photos to go with this entry 🙁 Oh well.

The wedding was quite lovely, and it was absolutely great to hang out with old friends again. It was a bit shocking to me to remember just how good some of these friends were. I guess my time back in Vancouver has sort of dulled my memory of what Ottawa life was like, but I received a lot of hugs and a lot of people went out of their way to come over and say hi during the reception. I spent a lot of time catching back up with Francois and his wife Christine. Francois was a friend of mine who also worked at JDS Uniphase in Ottawa, and also went along with us on our crazy Cuban hurricane adventure in 2001.

My original plan was to leave the wedding at 1am via bus, grab my stuff in the hotel, and somehow make it to greyhound station to catch the bus to Montreal. However, during dinner a few people planted the seed for a crazy idea — let’s get a group of people together and rent a stretch limo to take me there. A few hours later, a big ass stretch limosine pulled up to my hotel, and we filled the back with beer and friends. Rob’s two younger brothers were visting from Saskatchewan, so it was our first priority to get them in the limo and show them a good time.

I don’t even really remember much of that ride actually, probably because of how tired I was. I did the math last night, and I’m pretty sure I only had about 7 hours of sleep in three days at that point. When we got to Dorval in Montreal, Boris and Tim helped me into the terminal and made sure I got on the right plane. The girl at the counter gave us three a fairly stern glare, since it was somewhat obvious we had spent the night drinking, and technically you’re not supposed to fly in that state. Thankfully she didn’t assert herself, and thankfully we were smart enough to just smile and nod.

The wait for the plane was excrutiating. I really wanted nothing more than to sleep, and drink as much water as I could fit into my stomach, but I had to hang out close to the gate and keep my eyes open so I didn’t sleep through it. When I finally got onto the plane, I put my bag in the overhead, sat in the seat, and apparently passed right out. I was fairly surprised, given that I don’t like flying, to wake up over the Atlantic ocean, around 2.5 hours into the flight. I had a quick Air-Transat-Sandwich, and then slept pretty much until we landed in the Dominican.

I looked rather stupid at this point — most people were wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but I appeared to be the only fool wearing half a suit. I was pretty ecstatic when I saw my luggage in the baggage claim, and proceeded to take it directly to the bathroom where I took off my superhero costume and changed back into regular clothes.

I was still exhausted, and was already dreaming about going to sleep when I got into the resort. The bus ride from the airport was only around 15 minutes, and check in took about 10. It took me about 2 more minutes before I was fast asleep in my bed here, with the warm blue-green glow of the Caribbean just a few steps from my door.

I can’t really remember the last time I was that tired. I slept most of yesterday away, occasionally waking up to go for a swim or have a drink at the pool bar. But after 30 minutes or so of that, I realized that I could easily sleep more, and ended up back in my bed, dreaming of cute Caribbean girls. Despite sleeping around 8 hours during the day here, I also managed to sleep another 8 last night, and still woke up feeling like I needed more. I left my card reader back in my room, so I’m going to go get it now and post a few photos.

PS – I have somehow mananged to chip my front tooth. Thankfully it’s on the back of the tooth, so it’s not visible at all. But my tongue is getting a bit beat from rubbing along the sharp edge of it. I’ll have to hit the dentist when I get back to Vancouver and make sure it’s ok.