Heading North

The plan is to fly to Manitoba today, see polar bears, then fly back to Burbank on Thursday.

But it’s oh-so-complicated. Everyone wants proof of vaccination. Cool, no problem. But Canada also wants a covid test. So I stroll up to the Air Canada counter with my passport, my vaccination card, my ArriveCan QR code, and a printout of the covid PCR test (negative, of course they want the expensive kind). Then I get to fly to Winnipeg via Vancouver, and I’m nervous about the arrival in Vancouver because I have to show all my proof again. I don’t know why I’m nervous. I don’t plan to lose my phone or my proof before boarding begins.

I stay two nights in a Winnipeg hotel, and on Monday morning before work, I get to take an antigen covid test so I can get back into the US on Thursday morning, then I work all day on my laptop.

Tuesday morning, I get up at hell-o’clock to be at the charter flight hangar by fuck-off-o’clock. Yes, I carefully checked all the coffee sellers near the hotel to confirm I could get coffee at hell-o’clock since “charter flight hangar” doesn’t sound like it’s got much in the way of services, and the last thing I want is to be complaining about a headache all day when I’m supposed to be looking at polar bears.

Then it’s a short flight to Churchill, where there’s a whole planned excursion involving a zoologist and a giant tundra buggy, which looks like an updated Dulles Airport shuttle. I have two memory cards, my Lumix, my phone with two power banks, and I borrowed a parka from Steve B, because all my winter clothes live in Jersey City rather than in Southern California, for some reason.*

This is a day-long excursion in theory, but I was paranoid the bears would all be, I dunno, asleep or something, so I negotiated to fly back the next night on a different charter flight. I was able to book the last remaining room in town—at a bed-and-breakfast with shared baths—and found a day tour involving a Jeep or something instead of the Dulles shuttle. And they leave me at the Churchill Airport on Wednesday night, where the charter plane takes me back to Winnipeg for a night before I fly to LAX via Vancouver. Assuming the US likes my antigen results and decides to let me back in.

It’s complicated. Damn bears better cooperate or I’m gonna…do something. Glare in their direction, maybe.

*Okay, I know the reason.