It's Not You, It's Me.

I'm beginning to think that I'm cursed when it comes to traveling. Specifically trying to get home. This past week I was in Iqaluit for work and the travel woes that came with the trip were indeed, woeful.

Travel Insurance

Remember the ordeal we went through trying to get back from our trip a month ago? When we returned, I was lamenting to a friend about it, and how it was a lot of money that we weren't expecting to spend. She mentioned that some credit cards offer travel interruption/delay insurance and I should look into it. I wasn't feeling overly confident at my chances, since weather delays aren't paid for by airlines and I assume it would carry into insurance carriers, but I decided it wouldn't hurt to look into it.

When we moved here, we looked into a few different travel reward credit cards and eventually ended up with the platinum American Express Aeroplan. The annual fee is daunting when you see it, I know. BUT it comes with a 2 for 1 annual pass that allows us to fly a short-haul flight for half the points (a $3,000+ value in itself considering Baker to Winnipeg is considered short-haul) and it comes with a wide range of insurance options as well, apparently! It was a really painless process to make a claim - I called the customer service line, explained my situation, had a claim started and they sent me forms to fill out. The forms were easy and didn't take much time, so I packaged them up with my receipts, sent it ExpressPost mail (ugh, $20 for an envelope with a tracking number. That hurt.) Within 2 weeks I was mailed a cheque back for my expenses! Considering I wasn't expecting any of the money to be returned, what a nice surprise to open my mail and see it waiting for me. The only thing that the policy does not cover is transportation (car rental, gas, taxis, etc.) but everything else was covered. That almost made the frustration of a 6 day delay better. Almost.

To summarize, the moral of the story is - check to see if you have travel insurance through your credit card! If you don't, it is definitely something I would look into - especially if you're traveling in and out of the north!

-L

Travel Woes

We are finally home after quite the adventure trying to get back! Final tally: 2 days of vacation, 6 days of trying to travel. The math seems wrong there, doesn't it??

Still Vacationing...

Our mini-vacation has been extended (un)fortunately...we were supposed to have left on Saturday, but after a few delays we were finally told our flight was cancelled and we had to re-book. The kicker is that the flights for Sunday and Monday were fully booked, so the earliest we can leave is Tuesday. And since it is weather-related as to why the flight was cancelled, we are on the hook for our own costs of staying. Like I told Jeff, I would have been fine if we had planned to stay longer, or if we had been told earlier our flight wasn't going anywhere...but the hassle of having to scramble and pay for 3 extra days of hotel and car, plus having to unpack our carefully packed groceries and waste a whole day in the airport, made me mad. Had I known we were going to be away this long, I'd have booked us all the way home to Ontario for the week!

As it stands, we are making the most of our extended vacation after settling in and making sure Pepper was ok for a few more days. We went to see the Lego movie in 3D on Saturday, and yesterday we spent a few hours lounging in the book store with some hot beverages. Life isn't so bad (just really expensive, lol). Our hotel room has a kitchen in it, and I have started to dip into the supplies we bought to bring back...not quite what I was expecting to do, but it's cost-effective and saves us from going out 3x a day.

It's actually a pretty good thing we aren't flying today since Baker is under a blizzard warning and we probably would have been stuck along the way. (At least that is what I keep telling myself.)

-L

A Weekend Away...

It's hard to plan a surprise getaway when you live in Nunavut. There are many more logistics than booking a b&b and packing an overnight bag into the trunk of your car. I managed to pull it off (though a day late) and spent some of our Aeroplan points to whisk us away to the paradise that is Winnipeg. Side note: I am terribly saddened that Winnipeg is considered to be exciting, and have vowed to expand our horizons as much as possible. 

It was a plan that needed many people helping, and a lot of finagling but I confirmed the tickets on Wednesday at 2pm and we were on a plane by 4pm. In 30 minutes we were able to pack, find a Pepper-sitter, book a hotel and grab something from the post office. The rest, as they say, is history.

I surprised my husband with the news and we were off! So far, it has been a relaxing trip in the sense that we didn't have a plan, or things that needed to be done...we are simply here to reconnect and spend some time together in the "big city." Highlights so far have included scoring some amazing deals: our car rental ($10/day and unlimited kms?!), our hotel (hooray for government rates!), our food (dinner the first night with...plenty of adult beverages came to $30 after tax and tip, and our 2 huge hot breakfasts came to $9 after taxes!!). We then spent a long time walking around the shops, cheering with a crowd of strangers in the middle of the mall while we watched the Canadian women's hockey team win their Olympic gold medal, driving about town, and generally regaining a sense of normalcy again.

It's been a while since we have gone south and we needed the change of scenery and a bit of warmth (only -14 here!). Tomorrow we will hit some more shops, maybe go to the spa and get a haircut, and then have a nice dinner before we head back on Saturday morning. It's not a long trip, but it is just what we needed. We are as excited to be here as though this were a honeymoon!

I feel so rejuvenated! :)

-L

Home

After a 14 hour travel day - most of it waiting around airports - I finally arrived home last night. The moon was full and shining brightly over Baker Lake, and it felt good to be back. Even the -41 weather didn't deter me from rushing off the plane. :)

Jeff and my lovely neighbour were at the airport waiting for me and we headed to the house where I was attacked by puppy kisses. It was wonderful.

I love the opportunity to travel for work and I enjoyed my time away, but home is where my family is. And it feels so good to be home.

-L

Soon

Missing my boys.
Just one more sleep and I'll see you soon, my loves.

-L

Whirlwind

Hello from Edmonton!

Friday afternoon I got the go-ahead to travel to Edmonton for some training that was (will be) this week. I was originally going to fly out on Saturday but the weather forecast looked ominous with an impending storm, so the afternoon became an unexpected whirlwind!

Our (Unexpected) Stay in Rankin Inlet

When we were coming back from our holidays, we had an unexpected stay in Rankin that delayed us getting back by a day. Everyone we've met refers to Rankin as "the black hole" or a similar version - because you never know whether your plane will leave when it's supposed to, and if it does leave it doesn't mean your bags will follow. It's a central hub in Nunavut that planes must stop over, and I fear the traffic is overwhelming for the small facility. It's also in a community where weather is always questionable to boot - so there's a lot of stuff that can go wrong when you reach it (if you can reach it).

We have been lucky to date that none of our trips have meant that we needed to stay overnight in town. Yes, we have been delayed (once by 6 hours...which, in an airport that is the size of a small school gymnasium feels like a LONG time), but we have always managed to get out the same day we flew in. Until this time.

The Past Month

4 weeks is a long time to be away, and yet it feels like it flew by in the blink of an eye. Time moves funny in the south; I simultaneously felt like things were moving way too fast and it still felt like we were gone for a long while. Does that make sense?

It feels good to be back in Nunavut. To be honest, I didn't think I would say that after a month of being surrounded by *home* and all the good things that come with that. Yet, here we are. It's good to be productive and get back into a routine. Weeks upon weeks of indulgence and excess has caught up to us and we were exhausted when we finally arrived in Baker. Wouldn't trade a second of it for the world though; seeing our friends and family after so long was good for our souls. The weather was gorgeous the entire time we were home (high teens/low twenties!) and we took advantage of that as much as possible, sometimes just sitting outside on the front steps and enjoying the greenery.

We had a wonderful trip and left feeling rejuvenated and ready for Nunavut again. We aren't sure when our next trip home will be, but hopefully it won't be too long!

And since I know you missed Pepper more than you missed us, here is a before/after shot of our handsome man after a day at the doggy spa. He hated us for doing it, but he's just too darn cute isn't he??

It's good to be back!
-L

So long, summer!

For those of you that follow the television series Game of Thrones, you'll recognize the oft-quoted phrase "winter is coming". As Lily mentioned in our last post, summer left us far too soon. Granted, autumn is the season that normally precedes snow, but without any trees, it's really hard to determine visually when that season is occurring. We went from warm days and cool nights to...snow flurries. I honestly think autumn lasted about twenty minutes this year.

Seriously, summer was much shorter and cooler this year than last, which makes me wonder if we are going to have a longer, colder winter ahead. If that's the case, I'm glad we're bugging out when we are. We're just praying that the inclement weather holds off long enough for our flight to exit Baker Lake. Oh, and maybe let us land and leave Rankin Inlet, too.

By the way, if anyone reading this knows of a way to safely and humanely calm a Yorkshire Terrier, we're open to ideas. We have tried a variety of methods, with varying results. There are dog treats that purport to contain calming ingredients, and while Pepper is happy to eat them, their cumulative effect appears to have no effect, or not significant of one to make a difference.

We tried using a product called BioCalm, which was recommended by a vet. It possesses a rather unpleasant odour, and our dog wants nothing to do with it. We even bought him a Thundershirt, which is a velcro-wrapped T-shirt that tightly hugs a dog's ribcage. It is supposed to mimic a hug, which makes a dog calm down. Based on what we've experienced so far, we need a ThunderStraitjacket instead.

On a brighter note, I finally have a source for caribou meat. Lily and I have been anxious to try it, and I look forward to crossing it off my bucket list. That just leaves muktuk (whale blubber), but I need a little more courage to make that happen.

-J

Stress Kryptonite

Lately, I've noticed a slight spring in my step at work, and the typical daily stressors have been strangely muted. On the one hand, I could contribute this to being more familiar with the office routines, and projecting a more positive attitude. I would be kidding myself, though. The real reason, I've no doubt, is the upcoming departure of our family back to Ontario.

Keeping that thought in the back of my mind is like stress kryptonite – nothing can bring me down when I have that thought floating in the back of my mind, and I imagine Lily feels the same way.  Don’t get me wrong – the first two factors I mentioned are helping as well, but the subtle wave of euphoria owes most of its existence to the near-imminent vacation.

Which reminds me, I have to start collating all of the rough notes I've jotted down and transform them into a stellar best man speech for my brother’s October nuptials.  Calling it ‘stellar’ is, I realize, is a bit superfluous – it is my speech, after all. J Still, my brother played the same role at my wedding last year, and he did me justice, so I have to respond in kind.

I think it’s a shame we don’t generate the opportunities to tell our family and friends how highly we think of them more often. The two most common times we say nice things about each other is at weddings, and unfortunately, funerals. That’s why I've enjoyed this process so much – going back through memories of childhood, adolescence, and growing up together, it’s been enlightening to remember all of the great qualities my brother possesses. I would list them here, but that might make my speech redundant and who wants to read a 500…sorry, 5000 word blog post?

It’s funny to think that between Adam’s wedding and my friend Tim’s wedding, and re-connecting with friends and family, we will have to try to squeeze some actual vacation time in. I’m sure we’ll manage, somehow.

-J

Random August Thoughts

I don't have any coherent thoughts for a post today, so I'm just going to write a list of random things that are currently on my mind.

More Iqaluit - Sort of like Home?

It's funny how the simple task of running errands, something that is so normal and mundane while in the south, becomes such an enjoyable treat when it's not something you can do everyday. While in Iqaluit, I found myself smiling on a few occasions while I was doing the simplest of tasks - going to the bank, the restaurant, the grocery store...each trip felt like a mini-vacation. Maybe I'm just really easy to please, or maybe it's a sign that Baker Lake needs to grow some more! :)

Hello from Iqaluit!

This post is being posted pretty late in the evening, I'm sorry! My only excuse is that I've been in Iqaluit since Monday for work and the days have been long, so I'm pretty tired by the evening. I'm actually writing this from the hotel bed (1st overtime of the Pittsburgh/Boston game is on in the background and I'm so stressed! Playoffs make me so nervous!)

When we left Baker on Monday morning, it was a sunny day with a beautiful forecast in store for the week (12 degrees tomorrow, I hear!). Unfortunately, Iqaluit was having an unexpected freak snowfall on Monday and we were prepped in Rankin that if the weather was bad, we would overshoot Iqaluit and fly to a community in Quebec to refuel, and then return to Rankin where we would have to spend the evening. Needless to say, there were probably a dozen people from my work alone, and we were very anxious to land in Iqaluit on Monday if there was any possibility. Our collective fingers were crossed!

The Homestretch

The final portion of our vacation occurred mainly in our hometown, where we have our house and where Lily's family lives. We managed to surprise both of her parents, although her sister had been in the know for a while. When we arrived at the house, Lily ran upstairs, opened her parents' door and asked, "What's for breakfast?". Her mother was completely shocked, and when that wore off, extremely happy to see her eldest daughter home. Her father was at work, so Lily's mother asked him to buy food on his way home, but it was all food that Lily likes, which made him suspicious. He was still very happy to see his suspicions confirmed. We had a great family reunion that day, albeit a teary one.

Village People

If you're just joining us, we continue the recap of our vacation with our trip to Florida to visit with my family.

After our relaxing cruise, we met up with my cousins at Orlando airport, and headed to the Villages, just outside of Ocala. For those you unfamiliar with the Villages, it is the world's largest retirement community, home to about 50,000 residents 55 and up. It is large enough to warrant its own weather pattern, and it arguably houses the largest number of golf carts on this continent. If you like to golf, it is a veritable mecca, with 18 professional level courses and dozens of par-3 courses scattered throughout. It is a place where our family like to congregate whenever possible, given that a few of our number qualify as residents, many of us enjoy golfing, and weather in Florida is typically more temperate than Ontario (or Nunavut!) in the winter. 

The Magic of Disney

For those of you just tuning into our programme, we are about to embark on a miniseries of posts about our recent trip south to visit our family and friends. (Most posts will be much longer than usual with photos, so we apologize in advance!)

We begin this chapter by flying to Toronto, and I will mention first that our puppy Pepper was decidedly unhappy during his third flight (the first two having occurred the previous day, since we had to overnight in Winnipeg), and competed with the airplane's decibel level during take-off and landing.  I thought he quieted down during the flight, but it might be that the noise of the engines simply drowned him out. 

Glaring at us from under the seat

We were in our hometown for just under a day, so we introduced our little guy to our friends currently renting our house, and then packed him up and took him over to my parents' house in Mississauga. Originally, the idea was to surprise our families about our trip home; this worked much better on Lily's side than mine. 

There's no place like home....

One of the great things about living so far up north is that you learn to cherish vacations a lot more. Believe me, we know that first-hand, as we just returned from two weeks with our families and friends. We intended it to be a surprise, so we couldn't announce it beforehand to anyone. We have so much to talk about, we've decided to split our vacation blog post into multiple parts - our anniversary trip, our time in Florida, our time in Ontario, and our unusually interesting flight home.

Buffers

For those of you planning to travel over the holidays, let me offer you some sound advice; add a buffer. Or two. To put it more plainly: factor an extra day or two into your trip. I mention this because weather is that great unknown quality that can make your holiday beautiful, or strand you at an airport, and in my line of work, I see all too much of the latter. I've joked with my pilots before about the show Arctic Air, which shows planes taking off and landing in what appears to be really crazy weather, and ask them why they can't do that, and the response I get is that TV and reality are widely spaced. The truth is that the minimum conditions to land an airplane up here do contain ample safety margin, and the other day is a good example of why. Up until about 20 minutes before the plane was due to land, the weather was fine. In those last 20 minutes, though, we had thick fog roll in, making visibility on the ground impossible, and making some passengers' plans all for nought. So take it from the expert - don't assume that travelling in the north will mirror your experience in the south.