I flew to Toronto this afternoon for a workshop I'm taking part in tomorrow. I love Toronto and was excited to come to the city for a visit. It's a pretty quick flight, a little over two hours, and I'm quite familiar with the city so it's not like being thrown into a scary situation. After the workshop tomorrow I'll get to do some shopping, sightseeing, and visiting which I'm really looking forward to.

Aaaaaaanyway, that's not the point of this post. The point of the post is to highlight how effin' weird people are, how these tendencies tend to present themselves more when you're traveling, and how strange things happen in bunches.

I get to the airport, make out with H2B at the security gate like I'm going off to World War 2 and will never see him again, manage to avoid a cavity search or excessive frisking and am off to chill at Gate 20 and wait for ye olde boarding call. I get comfortable and am just starting to do some work on my laptop when the voice over the pager says,

"Air Canada Flight 619 paging Passenger Wang! Passenger Wang, please proceed to gate 20!"

Of course I laugh out loud, look around, and realize no one else is laughing. I slink down in my seat. At least I'm working on a Mac, Mr. 10-Year-Old-Dell giving me the evil eye. I peer around at my gatemates (?) wondering who's the Wang.

Pager goes off again. This time: "Air Canada Flight 619 paging Ross Fuck! Ross Fuck, please proceed to gate 20!"

I sit bolt upright and look around wildly. NO ONE is reacting and I'm shocked. HELLOOOOO...OUR FLIGHT CONTAINS BOTH PASSENGER WANG AND ROSS FUCK AND NOBODY'S REMOTELY AMUSED??

I should not have been surprised when the next passenger summoned to Gate 20 was none other than Ron Melons. I check my calendar. It's not April Fool's Day. I wait for Hugh Jass, Harry Bird, Mike Hunt, or Cream of Sum Yung Guy to be called next because clearly I am flying in the company of porn stars, but it didn't happen.

We boarded the plane, left ON TIME!!!! and off we go. My seatmate starts groaning. "Unnnnnngggghhhh..." The stewardess came by. "Miss!" moans the seatmate in a super thick British accent. "Do you have any boiled sweets?"

The stewardess looked like she had just come off a six-day bender and maybe a 12-hour shift of straight hooking. This woman was seriously rough. "What? I can't hear ya," she snaps at Prince Harry. Not even pleasant. Mama's cranky when she's coming down off her crack pipe, I suppose.

"The altitude is bothering my ears and I'm wondering if you have any boiled sweets," Prince Harry repeated.

"Naaaaaw, I don't got any sweets but do ya want a glass a' water?" Miss Air Canada 2009 replies. Prince Harry didn't want any water. Even gum wouldn't help. Only a boiled sweet would do. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't know WTF a boiled sweet is. If someone asked me for a boiled sweet I'd probably slap him.

We landed in Toronto without incident and I made it to my hotel in superbly fast time. I folded and hung up all my clothes from my suitcase, lined up my little shoes in the closet and checked e-mail. My room is on the 11th floor, and the gym's on 17th. I went up to the gym for a little quality treadmill time. Question: Why are hotel gyms always so bloody hot? It was about 40*C in there and I was sweating buckets and wanting to vomit. I slugged out my run and went back to the bank of elevators with sweat like literally pouring off me and stinking uber bad.

There was a middle aged guy waiting around the elevators, too, and obviously really agitated. An elevator came but it was going up. Clearly, he wanted to go down. "Fuck! FUCK!" he shouts like a kid having a tantrum and starts kicking at the elevator door. Um, sir, you're obviously physically capable...if it's that much of an issue take the stairs?

I don't want to be trapped inside an elevator with this angry freakazoid so I frantically jab at an elevator button and avoid eye contact as he fumes around the hallway. I realized a moment too late I'd hit the wrong button--up instead of down to get back to my floor. "FAAAAACK!" is the exaggerated sigh out of the elevator assclown.

Rather than waiting around for a down elevator, I jump into this one to avoid him. Too late, I realize that it's full of university age guys and older couples. So I'm stinking like an absolute dirtball and crowded amongst all sorts of people AND going to the wrong floor. Faaaantastic. I leap out at the 18th floor and trot right for the stairwell, where I descend back to 11th, where I belong.

I love people with pervy names, boiled sweet fetishes, and elevator rage. Having such "characters" in the world makes writing blog posts a lot easier while reminding me that maybe I'm not so strange, after all.

Side note: anyone have any suggestions for things to do while visiting Toronto?