There was one last bike ride today, back to the bagel bakery for at least two fresh and hot ones to bring back to Joni in Victoria. I added the 13 km bagel ride to our total, but even this doubtful ploy did not bring the total tour over 3000 km. No, it stalled out at 2957 km.!

Despite Dodie's warning that the to be checked duffel bag was totally full, I still could not resist picking up one full dozen. One advantage of having this minimum mass is that when they are in your backpack, any aches you may have are removed by the constant warmth. "Studies" have shown that you can cycle up to an hour with this beneficial influence, before it begins to cool.

Since Westjet decided that we could not begin to head west until early evening, we sort of got one more Montreal day. While Dodie cuddled with Evee and a movie, I headed out with Joseph to the soccer pitch. I had already suffered a 12-0 drubbing at his hands the day before, and I was eager to improve my showing. Since this is 2023, I put the problem to ChatGPT, asking how I could defeat a 9 year old in soccer. The reply was typically useless. It advised me to improve my dribbling with practice cones. This sidestepped my main problem, which is that I no longer have the speed or endurance of the  9 year old.  Some way to tilt the playing field would perhaps have been helpful, but my main point here is that after (almost) 3000 km of daily cycling, and despite feeling what I thought was very strong, it ain't so. However, the result today was 12-1, which my publicist is touting loudly as 1-12!

The remaining "fun" for the day began at the Westjet counter at Trudeau Airport. We had withdrawn the bikes from the luggage storage, after forking over $230 for the approximately three days they were there, and had wrapped the boxes in cling wrap - following the advice of Brent Irvine. We already knew that the inspection at the Oversize Baggage (unlike at Porto) did not have a large enough x-ray machine to pass the boxes through. So we expected to have to cut the wrap so they could look inside.  And if Westjet wanted to be as picky as Transat had been, agents would want to look inside at the check in counter.

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What we were not ready for was Westjet staff that acted as though they had never seen a bike or a bike box before. They stared at their computers and puzzled over how to charge for these weird unheard of apparitions.

They formed the opinion that these things must be "oversized baggage" and they insisted on weighing the boxes, so they could feed those figures into their calculation. Then they puzzled and thought and bandied numbers about between themselves- in the $184 range, I seemed to hear. Finally, I found myself in the same position I had been when hassled by CATSA (inspection) when we came back from Mexico last time. That is, brandishing my phone which was showing the relevant portion of the agent's own website, where it was written in black and white that they were being idiots.

In the case of Westjet, the site says clearly that the fee is $50, unless the bike box exceeds 115  inches in length plus height plus width, in which case it attracts an oversize fee. The larger of our two boxes came in at 97 inches, not that they ever measured it!

You know how they say come three hours early? Starting with the Westjet ditherers, that was really an underestimate of the needed time. Finally they came to their answer - $40 per box, don't ask how ( we didn't!).

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Westjet was not quite done with us, in their chosen field of Oversize. They now claimed that our little duffel bag, our one piece of normally checked luggage, needed to be "Oversize-d".  The argument was two pronged. First they claimed the bag was "too long". Dodie squelched that by putting the bag into their standard bag measurer tray. Then they came up with a real puzzler - the bag was oversize because it did not have wheels. This is interesting mental gymnastics. Presumably 99.9% of the luggage that these folks put on the belt behind them (the regular checked baggage belt) has wheels. So it this duffel has no wheels, it's an odd duck, and odd ducks go to Oversize!

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Ok the duffel made it to the belt! So they sent us with only the bikes to Oversize for inspection. 

Only thing, they sent us to the wrong Oversize, and we had to scour the level looking for the right one.

Oversize then proceeded to pull every item out of the boxes (except the actual bikes), since as we say, their x-ray was too small.  They fired up their x-ray then to look at all the pulled out stuff, and then started filling in forms about - what? how diligent they had been?. Meanwhile, Dodie had to re-pack and re-tape.

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Dodie had asked for wheelchair assistance to reach the gate, and this really saved the day in terms of not missing the flight. A Westjet agent turned up at our (correct) Oversize and said they had been looking for us, 'cause we've got to get to the gate, eh! So what were we doing way out here? - (at the correct Westjet Oversize.) Oh yeah, right - they acknowledged.

The agent then took us on a rather wild odyssey around the large crowd waiting for Security, down  some kind of general  priority channel, and again into a priority wheelchair line. This landed us "quickly" in the arms of our old friends CATSA security inspection. Admittedly we are a bit of a nightmare for them. The lady has a metal cane and two metal knees, and they are travelling with a pile of electronics, including 12 dangerous looking wired, black, electrical boxes, each in its own envelope. Their general reaction is to have all the stuff in about seven trays and to shuffle these with trays of other travellers, going through their x-ray. Then they will split our trays into ones they like and ones they want to talk about. I have to line up to go talk, while they continue to puzzle over Dodie's knees and usually lose her high tech walking stick, which they also mistrust a lot.

We talked (98 wH, it's all legal, look at your web site, etc) and the walking stick was found (crumpled, on the floor under the x-ray), etc. etc., giving us the chance to put our stuff all back together. The Westjet agent patiently waited through all this, and then hustled us along long corridors and into two elevators, before we emerged miraculously at the gate, where boarding was half done.  To her credit, she then spoke to the gate agent and inserted us into the boarding line. Like that, "in no time", our Westjet check in experience concluded. 

The Westjet planes had no seat back entertainment, but there was something to occupy our interest behind our seats. In the row behind us were a boy and two girls, maybe in their early 20's. They seemed to think they were at a pyjama party, as they bounced and giggled and talked continually for the first two hours of the flight. Finally, unable to really hear what was playing on my ear buds and realizing that there could be four more hours of this, I kneeled up on my seat and bawled them out.  This confirms that not only can I not catch a 9 year old on a soccer field, but I am a seriously grumpy old man to boot! I must have done a good job, though, because they shut up, at least until just after landing.

Our long suffering friend Marvin showed up at the Victoria airport around midnight, and whisked us home. Marvin (and Erika) are such sweet people, they seem to endure this kind of chore handily. In fact I might go so far as to suggest that in the world of Marvin pick ups, this was not a bad one, since we appeared at the airport in one piece and not (particularly) injured.

So there it is. Looking back at the trip I am impressed that we tackled what turned out to be a fairly tough route, particularly with the hills in northern Portugal. It was tougher than Provence, tougher than Bretagne. Others, of course, have challenged much more difficult terrain, high passes, and such. But for us, this was quite something.

Watch for a final entry or two on costs, weather, and other statistics, and some more thoughts about the route. But for now, I'm off to mow the grass, while mulling our next sortie - currently planned for Germany in late August.