The past few weeks of this winter have been characterized by some freakish weather and storms in our region and those adjacent.  Ice, snow, wind, we’ve had it all.  While very little has affected our family directly, the weather has both played havoc with travel for many people that I know, and made me really appreciate the fact that we are heading to the beach this week. 

At some point over the last two weeks, those two points connected in my brain and started to stress me out.  Our flight is the first flight out of the airport, is routed through Toronto, and has a connection time of just over an hour.  I began to play the worst case scenario game in my head, and came up with us losing every time.  I knew that even the slightest delay on Friday morning, even for something simple like de-icing, could cause us to miss out connection to the south, and that the next flight on Air Canada arrived two days later after some funky, circumnavigate the globe type routing.  I didn’t like the odds.

Much obsessive watching of the weather, complete with constant verbal updates must have had an impact on Willy, as he randomly offered to call the airline tonight and see what it would take to have us fly to Toronto on Thursday night. I sent him off to make the call, and finished putting the lils to bed. When I checked in with him, he’d been unsuccessful for over ninety minutes, as there was another storm working its “magic”, and Air Canada’s lines were constantly busy.  We decided to call try one more time, this time to Air Canada Vacations, and happily he got through.

Once Willy was connected to an agent, he explained our fears, and the fact that we were travelling with young children, and asked if the first flight could be moved.  “I’ll see what I can do”, she said, as she put Willy on hold. We fully expected to be charged for this, as was clearly stated on our agreement.  While on hold, we talked about how much we were willing to pay, an amount I was mentally referring to as the value of my sanity in my head.*

When she came back, she named a price that couldn’t be beat – the change was to cost us nothing, even though there is no terrible weather forecast for the remainder of this week.  We happily accepted and raced to make hotel reservations in Toronto, and plans for dinner with family.  I am now super excited for a vacation that is starting one day earlier, and will last one day longer… except the part about having one less day to pack.  Guess I should get started with that!

* FYI – it turns out that Willy was willing to pay more for my sanity, which is nice to know.*