New sorts of travel

A recent trip to Winnipeg for a wedding has introduced me and my wife to how the world of travel has changed. Life is now theoretically more simple, but I suspect it is really more complicated.

The first part was easy. We were going to take an aeroplane early in the morning, and before I could organize a taxicab, my next-door neighbor said if you have to be at the airport at 5:30 in the morning let me drive you there to save you the cost of a cab. He also said he would wake us up at 4 o’clock in case that was necessary. So in due course, our next-door neighbor drove us to the airport before dawn where we were taken up and given status as uneasy travelers in the sense that I can’t walk very far. We flew to Montreal where we were met as we left the aircraft by someone who wheeled me in a wheelchair to where the next gate was where we were to catch our flight to Winnipeg. In due course the plane arrived and took us to Winnipeg and another wheelchair took me down to the baggage department where we found a daughter waiting for us.

The daughter and her husband and her children who were in town for the same wedding as we were had rented cars for their stay and we were driven to our hotel. So far nothing particularly new about what was going on. There were complications in that there were several of us staying in the same hotel going to the same wedding which was quite a long way away ranging in age from 21 to 88. We had several cars but people with different ambitions.

The wedding took place as was intended and we ended up dancing to YMCA which is something which my arthritic knees were not really ready for. By the time that was over, my wife and I, needed to go back to the hotel. And one of the daughters said I will order you a Uber, I had never used a Uber in the past, but in a very short order a car drove up and we got into it having been told that we had been paid for in advance and the driver of the Uber who looked like a recent immigrant seemed to have no difficulty in making the very complex drive through Winnipeg to our hotel, it took about 30 minutes.

My impression of traveling across Winnipeg was I would hate to have to do it because it’s all so complicated. But the Uber driver had one of those things on his cell phone which showed green lines if we were going in the right direction or something, and he knew how to get there even if we didn’t. So we arrived safely at the hotel. The next day we decided to go to the new museum of Human Rights. It is a very large building and I knew I could not handle it walking. But when I bought my entry ticket they pointed me in the direction of the cloakroom where they said I could acquire means to assist my travel and they indeed gave me my own electric wheelchair. They told me how the system worked and all I had to do was press a button and I was away. Not very fast but much better than walking with my knees. It was a long building and we went round ramps rather than using the elevators. When we reached the fifth level we stopped for a cup of coffee in theory but in my case it was meant to be dried tomato soup. When I wanted to move on wheelchair refused to react to the pressing of any button and could not be pushed. After some research we called downstairs and a person reappeared with a new battery which they used to replace the flat one that was in my wheelchair and our travels continued. We then returned to our hotel to prepare for the next phase. .

For our departure from Winnipeg, We did not need an Uber as one of our daughters was still there to take us to the airport. She dropped us off at departures and went to return the car to the rental agency. Sheila and I checked in at the counter and said we would meet Robin on the other side of security. We then got assistance to security and a man who stayed with us until we came out the other side. We were then offered a wheelchair again, except there were two wheelchairs, one for each of us. And when we got on them, it was pointed out that we didn’t have to do anything. It would take us to our gate or they would take us to our gate. So we mounted our wheelchairs and off we went, giving them no instructions except to keep going. When they reached our gate they stopped and we got off and found seats as we had an hour or two to wait for the actual plane. We looked round and saw that our wheelchairs with nobody on them or pushing them had turned around and were returning to where we had picked them up of their own volition, as if they were Uber driverless taxicabs. Whatever they were, they were impressive and worked. Everything was now organized except Robin hadn’t arrived. And we had to wait another hour before she did. Apparently because of the state of decay of me and the assistance of the people from Porter, we had been whizzed through the security system in a couple of minutes. Robin, who came back after returning the car, spent over an hour in the lineup waiting to go through security. Finally we were on board the plane and en route to Ottawa, where we took an Uber to Judy’s house, where Robin picked up her car with twenty-five red cushions or polychromatic cushions and drove us to her house in Carleton Place.