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www.MoreKidsThanSuitcases.com
WHERE THEY KEEP THE GOOD STUFF BY STEVE PRATT
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n our house my wife does the grocery shopping, and despite my objections she buys lots of fruits and vegetables. She does buy a bunch of treats as well, but when she gets home they get hidden so that the kids and I don’t eat them all within the first five minutes. When I go to look in the fridge, all I see is lettuce and carrots. All of the good stuff is hidden in the back.
My airport does the same thing. Our home airport is Kelowna and there’s so much good stuff there, but just like my wife they keep it all in the back. When you look at the Departures board at the Kelowna airport you’ll see destinations like Toronto, Vancouver, and Seattle. These are fantastic cities; definitely the fruits and vegetables of places to travel to from Kelowna, but if you’re willing to move a few things and look a little deeper, there’s some amazing treats hidden in behind.
My kids know where to look. We were sitting in the terminal at YLW waiting for a flight when my daughter ran into one of her friends. Their family was off to London for a holiday, and after a quick chat they went off to catch their plane. My daughter noticed them getting on a plane that was headed to Vancouver and asked why they weren’t getting on a flight to London, so I explained to her that you could fly just about anywhere from Kelowna, you just have to stop somewhere first.
“Even Brazil?” she asked? I paused for a minute, wondering why my young daughter was making plans to attend Carnival without me, but decided to prove my point by taking out my iPad and checking the possible routes to Sao Paulo. There were lots of options, including one going through Calgary, the flight we were waiting to catch. When I showed this to my daughter, she became
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concerned. If we forgot to get off the plane in Calgary, would we end up in Brazil? What would we eat there? What if her suitcase (and more importantly, her stuffed animals) went to Brazil without her?
I assured her that we would remember to get off the plane in Calgary, and that even the people who were going to Brazil would have to disembark in Calgary and get on a different plane for such a long flight. She nodded, and I thought I had reassured her until it came time to board the flight. When they called us forward, my daughter announced loudly to anyone who even looked like they might be remotely associated with an airline that “We are NOT going to Brazil!” You know after a while, puzzled looks from airline employees just don’t bother you anymore.
My kids get it now. When they look at the Departures board these days, they know that hidden behind the destination city of Seattle could be anything from New York to Rome. A ticket to Toronto could have them strolling past the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and a flight to Calgary could very well mean that we’re finally making that connection to Brazil. Those are the kind of treats that my airport keeps hidden in the back of their fridge, and I’m more than happy to shove aside a few fruits and vegetables to find them.
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