Transit

I left Edinburgh on Sunday afternoon to undertake the most ambitious transit journey of my life to date. As the train sped through the Scottish countryside, I consulted my notebook, packed with confirmation numbers and flight times. My itinerary: train to London King’s Cross, 2 hour bus to Heathrow, overnight in Terminal 3, trans-Atlantic flight to Toronto and then on to New York, connecting flight to Minneapolis and then another connecting flight to my final destination: Calgary, Canada. Added to that, about 15 hours in stop-overs in terminals on the way. It looked crazy but it looked possible.

Things came unstuck at New York’s La Guardia. I arrived to a monsoonal downpour that evolved during the afternoon into a full-blown tempest which prevented all inward and outward traffic. Hallucinatory from my lack of sleep, I heard whispers around me of planes circling overhead being sent back to Pennsylvania to refuel and hurricane warnings to the south of Manhattan. My flight was eventually delayed for two and a half hours, meaning I’d miss my connecting flight from Minneapolis into the awaiting arms of my family. The desperation of the huddled masses was my own.

But things worked out okay. I got my ticket changed and the airline staff gave compensation vouchers. A generous stranger lent me his cell phone to make an expensive international call to the parents to let them know not to wait up for me. And once I got to Minneapolis I spent the night in a heavily discounted four-star hotel room with fresh fruit and about 10 pillows on the king-sized bed. By the time I got on the next flight to Calgary I was freshly showered, rested, coffeed, CNN-ed and in a much better frame of mind for a reunion.

Rather than erecting a shrine and pining for my return at home, my entire family have jumped on the bandwagon and left Australia behind. My sister Leah is spending the year studying and living the wild life at Berkeley. My other sister Georgia is heading to Buenos Aires in a few weeks to teach English at an orphanage. Mum and Dad have been travelling North America for the last two months as part of their “Gap year”, visiting old friends and West Wing icons. Now is the first time we’ve been together for the whole year, and the last time for the next six months.

When I finally made it through the gates in Calgary I was greeted by a sisterly hug attack that was so violent it had the security guards approaching, walkie-talkies armed. And with this auspicious greeting, so began my North America Family Adventure. I was a bit worried about fitting back within a family - about being a daughter and sister again, after five months as a free agent. But as I write from our hotel room, sipping on Alberta alcopops and watching crappy Canadian TV after a hard day of breathing fresh mountain air, things are great.