Touring the North

Well I have changed towns again. Quite the story. Due to a huge hockey tournament going on, I could only get a hotel room in Sioux for that first night. Then I was out of luck. Thursday morning I stopped by the AMO shop to drop off some paperwork, then spent the rest of the morning trying to devise a plan to find somewhere else to stay for the night. All the hotels were full, so I tried the Bed & Breakfasts. Those were full too. I looked into maybe taking a bus to nearby Dryden, but there was no such thing. The lady at Greyhound tried to sell me on bus ride that got routed through Thunder Bay, making for almost a 16 hr trip just to get to Dryden which is only an hour and a bit drive. I'm pretty sure the booking service was based probably down south and the lady obviously had no geographical knowledge, otherwise she would have seen the ludicrousness of her solution. I'm not impressed with people who out of their own ignorance of the industry they work in cannot at least point me in the right direction to find a practical solution. Granted not a whole of people in souther Ontario know exactly where Sioux Lookout and Dryden are, but you'd think that at least someone working for Greyhound booking bus routes would have a working knowledge of where all these towns were that they served. I pointed out that Dryden was only an hour and a bit drive from Sioux, so I wasn't going to go all the way to Thunder Bay (5 hrs one way) and then all the way back to Dryden on the bus. She didn't seem to grasp the sillyness of the routing, so I said thank you and hung up the phone. I could probably take a taxi for less, or even rent a car. Besides, if I was going to go to Thunder Bay I might as well just stay there and meet my operator there, who was at that time en-route in the Van.

So I tried the one car rental place in town. Nothing available. Looked like Thunder Bay might have to be an option. It wouldn't be that bad if I made it there anyways. Its a nice big town, and thats where my operator would be anyways. I looked up the bus line in town and called them. It was just an answering service with scheduled times and rates, but there was a bus running. I touched base with my operator to let him know my plan as it stood at that moment, and then called a cab and off I was to the bus station/convenience store. I was chatting to the cabby on the way there, and he mentioned that last night he had driven a guy who was in the same boat as me to Dryden, and then elsewhere as there weren't even any rooms in Dryden. Crazy.

I got to the bus stop about 2 hrs before the bus was scheduled to leave, and I was lucky to get there when I did. I got the LAST ticket available on the bus, which was actually just a big van. Soon enough I was on my way to Thunder Bay for the 5 hr drive. Just to find a place to sleep for the night, sheesh. But now I am successfully in Thunder Bay, with a place to sleep, and have rendezvoused with my operator - and we are chilling for the next couple days until the airplane is finished inspection. After that, onto the next job. Never a dull moment.