I couldn't have been more wrong. What was meant to be one travel day, again, became two. We loaded all the girls & some parents onto our bus that was to take us to the airport, and after a very long, complicated roll call, we were off.
Once arriving at the airport we hauled ..... wait, I hauled all the equipment off the bus, plus my own luggage. This team seems to think they have magical equipment. It magically shows up, and it magically disappears when they are done with it. Upon letting the team know that they are to be responsible for their own equipment (again), I was confronted with two girls who were missing their luggage. Due to an astronomical misunderstanding, they had been told by another manager to just get on the bus, and while their luggage didn't fit below they bus, it would be sent on a later bus. I instructed them to stand outside the airport and double check every bus that stopped. It was a busy day at the Geneva Airport. The majority of the 19,000 participants were flying home today.
I went in and started the long process of checking in all of our additional luggage. This wasn't easy considering Air Canada's conveyer belts were not working and I had to sign each piece of luggage out to different people to keep our costs down. After this lengthy process, I started another lengthy process. I was given a receipt for every extra piece and had to go to another desk to pay for them. Technology is stupid. The lady had to ring in each piece of luggage separately. By the time I was 2/3 done, I remembered the girls I had instructed to stand and wait outside to check the buses. Over an hour had gone by and they had slipped my mind. The last 1/3 of the paying seemed to take an eternity.
Once finished paying I quickly returned to the rest of the group and was very happy to see my two luggageless girls. They had searched for an hour and a 1/2 and gave up. Their luggage was not on the buses. We were getting close to departure time and still had to go through security. We had no choice, but checked them in without their luggage. It was going to stay in Lausanne for now.
By the time we got through security and customs we were almost running to get to our plane. We had arrived at the airport 3 hours prior to our flight! Disappointingly I had no time to pick up Nate a watch or get any last Swiss wine or chocolates. We were herded onto the plane for our 7 hour flight home. I did feel a pang of jealousy as we passed the 1st class seats, would anyone notice?
We landed in Montreal and hit customs and security where poor Julia forgot to put her last minute, age 16, wine purchase into her checked luggage and had it taken from her. Jumped on to our plane again and headed to Toronto.
I sent the girls off on their own and went to kill our few hour layover. As you can guess .... wine and my book mixed in with a little bit of supper.
And our plane is delayed, our plane is given a gate change, and finally, our flight has been delayed again, this time departing the next morning. Everyone took the news fairly good except two girls who were too homesick to hold back their tears anymore.
The other manager and myself quickly organized our free hotel, and got everyone $10 breakfast vouchers for the morning. Picked up our luggage, stored our equipment in luggage claim area and headed for our shuttle. Of course, nothing is ever easy when you are traveling with a large group. The shuttle drivers were clueless! We showed them our hotel vouchers and asked them to take us there. They did, on their 3rd stop. The chaos will never end. Finally got everyone settled down for their 4 hour nap before heading back to the airport.
In the morning we hauled all of our equipment upstairs to check it again and went to breakfast only to find out our breakfast vouchers were utterly useless because Air Canada made them out for the day before!
Through a little bit of sorting, we ended up with breakfast and boarded our plane where we received a $75 gift voucher for Air Canada. Great, I get to travel with them again.
We arrived in Regina a few hours later to find the inevitable......NO HOOP.
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