Off the Wall

When the gallery owner in Terrace told me he could have a friend deliver my purchase to the South Terminal of the Vancouver airport, it sounded like an adventure. I imagined a scene out of Casablanca, with me standing on a fog-ridden runway as a single-prop plane descended out of the gloom. Or maybe I would sidle up to the bar in the terminal, wearing my trench coat and saying, “Got the bird, sweetheart?” out of the side of my mouth as a mysterious woman handed me the parcel under the table. So, naturally, I agreed. I’d never been to the South Terminal, and it sounded like a mild adventure, or at least a change of pace.

My first hint that my expedition would be more surreal than adventurous came when I board the airport bus at the 22nd Street Skytrain station. The shuttle from the main terminal didn’t run except in peak hours, I was told, but I could easily walk from the last bus stop.

Feeling concerned but already committed, I walked to the back of the bus and endured the long and winding fifty minutes of the ride – to say nothing of the fat woman who boarded on Granville Street and sat beside me devouring a Big Mac and fries, letting me hear every oversize mouthful she chewed and making me almost gag with the rancid smell.

The things we do to avoid passing through three transit zones and spending a little more money.

Eventually, just as reading one more page would have sent me nodding off to sleep, I reached the end of the line. Just to be sure, I consulted the driver again. “You can easily walk the distance,” he assured me. “It’s about a kilometer.”

For some reason, I forgot that no middle-aged North American except me had any clear idea of how far a kilometer was. Instead of taking a taxi, I started walking. I wasn’t wearing the shoes for serious walking, but I figured I didn’t need them for such a short stroll.

The better part of a kilometer down the road, I came across the BCIT Aerospace center. Aha, I told myself – the terminal must be on the other side of the embankment on the far side. It must be great for the students to be so close to the runway. I decided to cut through the school and maybe ask some likely looking official if I were on track. But I didn’t see anyone to ask, and by the time I blundered out into the back lot behind the school’s hangar, I realized that the South Terminal was nowhere in site.

I continued plodding down the road another half kilometer. I saw a sign and a traffic light that would allow me to cross to a turnoff. I did, glad to get away from the highway whose shoulder I had been traversing and arrive at my destination.

Only, it wasn’t my destination. The signs – so far as I could make out (and, frankly, I had to guess the direction) – seemed to indicate that the South Terminal was 1.5 kilometers to my right.

At this point, my spirits and my calf muscles were starting to sag, but I noticed that the signs seemed to point to a curve that went along two sides of a large grass field. I thought I’d save time and cut across the grass.

Unfortunately, I forgot that the shoes I was wearing had low, half-open panels on each side. Before I had gone thirty paces, my socks were soaked from the puddles concealed in the grass.

This must be how the knights on the Grail Quest must have felt after wandering around for months in the wilderness, I told myself. I grimly plodded on, feeling ridiculous and half-convinced that someone must be watching me from one of the distant hangars and doubling over in laughter. But I had gone too far to turn back now, I told myself.

The road turned into a smaller one, lined with two-story buildings that looked like they were put up in the early 1960s. That road wound around to a smaller one, and suddenly, beyond all hope, I had reached the terminal, nearly three kilometers from the bus stop from which I had started.

My shoes squelching, my shirt sweaty and me feeling more than a little dishevelled, I staggered into the terminal.

I regret to confess that there was no sultry dame to greet me – only a bored clerk at the airline’s desk, who interrupted her conversation about the weekend with another employee long enough to pass me the parcel and look on disinterestedly as I checked to see if it was intact. Much to my surprise after my long walk, it was.

Only then did I take the time to look around. The terminal was drab, almost empty, and as romantic as a turnip. I quickly downed a scone and a bottle of juice, and started back. I could have taken a cab, but I was determined to play my folly through to the end. After all, I might not otherwise have time to exercise today,

This time, though, I took the long way around the grass.

Knowing what to expect, I found the return trip less traumatic. It was, however, deadly dull. The side of a highway isn’t the place to walk while reading a book, and the only way I could amuse myself was by singing, secure in the knowledge that no one had the faintest chance of hearing me over the cars.

I arrived at the bus stop limping and cursing my choice of shoes. When the bus finally came, all I wanted to do was get home, so I splurged and travelled through three zones to get there. Suddenly, my usual day at the keyboard didn’t seem so bad after all.