September 24, 2012
Day 128: London, UK to Montreal, Canada: It's Over, But Not Finished
London sent us a not so subtle clue that it was time to leave, by turning cold and rainy. We stacked our stuff in the drizzle and waited for the taxi we had booked to take us to Gatwick. At the check in the crowd was not large. This was good, because the agent gave us a wee bit of hassle. She weighed our carry on bags, and declared one to be one kg too heavy. "Fine", said Dodie, "The bags contain clothes, so I will just wear an extra kg of them." On the other hand, why not transfer to our checked baggage, assuming one is 1 kg under its weight limit. So let's weigh the to be checked bags. "No", said the agent "I have to weigh and deal with the carry on first".
We worked through that one, and most importantly - they forgot to give us any grief at all about the bikes in the suitcases, except that they did not believe us about there being bikes in there, at first.
Gatwick departures (south terminal) is a bit strange in that they lead you through a large commercial/duty free area before allowing you to get to the gates. This includes a narrow gauntlet of high priced perfumes. No concern with those having perfume allergies here.
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Seven and a half hours in the narrow seats of a cheap flight is a bit of a trial, but we know people often have to fly a lot longer. In the end, the monitors reported we had flown something like 5873 km. "So what", I crowed, "we pedalled farther than that."
At last we were over Canada, and then on the ground and headed for customs and immigration. The first Canadian agent we spoke to could not believe that we had been in Europe for 4 months and had nothing to declare. "What goods do you expect us to carry on bikes?" we snapped. She seemed skeptical, but waved us on. We next expected to be greeted by a typically surly immigration officer. We always hope for a big "Welcome Home!" , and always get a taciturn sourpuss. This time, the sourpuss had been replaced by a bank of machines, at which we were supposed to scan our passports and customs declaration form. Typically, we could not get the scanner to scan, and called over an attendant, while muttering something about our country being turned into a Home Depot (Home Depot and several other retailers have introduced self checkout - this was self checkin).
The attendant was not surly, he was condescending. He told Dodie to get with it and learn the way of the future. It was a bit of retribution when he also could not get the thing to scan on the first few tries!
Our re-entry to our beloved country was saved, though, by the final agent who sang out "Thank you for choosing CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency)". Of course, there is no choice.
Soon, we had our reunion with Sabrina and Amelia. Then Joshua came home, and with him two bags of hot bagels!
We will stay here about two weeks before hopping a train West. But now we have to admit the cycling is over, until hopefully the Grampies Go Hawaiian - around Christmas or the New Year. Watch for that, but meanwhile we will not quite end this blog here. Rather, we will do some searching and add pages on selected subjects: best churches, most interesting houses, most picturesque cows, etc. We will also add in some video and audio, like church bells, cow bells, marching bands, and suchlike.
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