Way behind on my blogging. Good thing I’m not under contract.
I love cities, generally, and I really love Toronto. Actually, I’ve always had a good time visiting Canada, and have been to Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec at least once. But I’ve been to Toronto several times – usually in conjunction with a visit to my friends in Rochester, on the other side of the lake. It’s a very gay-friendly city and at least twice I stayed in a gay hotel close to the ‘gayborhood’ on Church Street. One time I was there, during the two-stepping craze of the early ’90’s, I just happened to be there during a gay two-stepping ‘conference’ which Toronto was hosting, so not only did I get to go dancing, I actually ran into friends of mine from home (Philly, at the time). I took C there once, early on. But the last time I was there was in 2000 for a Gilbert & Sullivan gathering “T2K”, where we sang through all the shows over about two days – great fun, and I hope they do it again sometime – and hadn’t been back since.
But my bosses had been encouraging our team to find a way to use training money that was available to us, and I was late on fulfilling some continuing education requirements to recertify my CBAP (business analysis) certification, so I looked at the IIBA website and they were promoting two conferences. One was pure business analysis and was in Orlando – but during a week I had conflicts. The other was a combination project manager/business analysis conference in Toronto. I was like, ‘would they really let me go to Toronto for a conference?’, but I looked at the agenda and it looked really interesting from a BA perspective, and I asked and they said yes!
(a couple of side notes: although project management and business analysis are roles that work together like salt and pepper, they are not at all the same role and I’ve never had any desire to be a project manager. Particularly in my 2019 helljob, where they tried to make me do it. Well, I guess they made me do it, but I was terrible at it, which I told them, and it wasn’t what they hired me to do. Also, this conference had two days of symposia (sit in a room and listen to someone for an hour) and two days of workshops (sit in a room for six hours doing group projects with strangers). I said right up front to my bosses that I only wanted to go for the first two days, and they didn’t object.)
So, once I’d gotten permission, I got further permission to go in a day early (paying for one night of hotel myself) and also to upgrade from coach (paying the difference in fare myself). And booked my travel. For some reason, although there were flights out of both LaGuardia (close by) and JFK (not close by), it made more sense to fly out of JFK – I don’t remember why, but it was a timing issue. The hotel was right by the convention center, and they were both by the big central train station – and there was an express train from the airport – so no car needed.
So anyway, end of March – Fri, I worked from home and did laundry and all that and packed, and Saturday morning, headed out to JFK. The only bobble was for some reason it wouldn’t let me check in online, and there were only two clerks doing the behind-the-counter stuff. The line was long and unmoving (and lots of families with kids and a ton of luggage). Eventually, a Delta manager came over and said – some of you move to the other side of this section, I have 4 agents over there! (OK, so why don’t you move the agents over here, dumbass?) So I did and we did and eventually got in.
Small plane, crowded, everyone with too much hand luggage as usual. (A lot of dufusses who though they could travel with their rolling luggage between their knees. No, you can’t do that.) And it was an awful rainy day – but I’ve discovered over the years that weather that will really throw off LGA flights won’t bother JFK flights at all. Flight itself was fine, but turbulent enough that they only served water and snacks, not like coffee or anything.
Once there, no real problem getting through customs or picking up the checked bag. Then the train thing was a little confusing, but it turned out there was a little train you took to go between terminals, and then you got on the express train – and no one actually looked at the express train ticket. Train to Union Station was about 20 minutes. Then it got really confusing, because (although I found out later, if I had gone out the Front Street exit, I could have just walked down the street to the hotel) that section of town has a bunch of train tracks that you either go under (on the road, on a sidewalk) or over (on a pedestrian bridge), and trying to follow Google Map’s directions didn’t make a ton of sense. But eventually I found the Intercontinental – quite swanky – and checked in. Room was nice and big, but (unfortunately) right by the spa and the pool, so lots of noisy foot traffic outside the room at all times.
I was starving, and it was about 3:00 now, so I went down the street to a fancy business-dinner type of restaurant and had a turkey burger and a beer. Then back to the hotel to unpack and figure out what was next. I did some walking around – over to the CN tower (a block or so away) first. I didn’t go up, but I’d done that years ago. Then walked down to the big park that used to be a train switching yard, with lots of old trains and stuff. Also figured out that although you could go straight into the convention center from the hotel, my conference was in the south side (on the other side of the tracks) and you had to up and over a pedestrian bridge. (I also got a glimpse of the ongoing yoga conference they were having in the north building – that was amusing and intriguing.)
Got cleaned up, decided to take the subway up to the gayborhood and explore and have a couple of drinks. The subway is really easy, although I was momentarily baffled by which way to go on the first line (because the line makes a V, and the point of the V is Union Station, so both directions go north-ish). Up to the appropriate stop, and was then just a block away from Church St. Walked the two blocks to see what was what, then first had a drink at the Churchmouse. This was very much more a pub than a bar – in that mostly people seem to be there to eat. I wasn’t hungry yet, but it was friendly and I had a good time. I plunked down some of the Canadian cash I’d gotten at the hotel ATM, they provided change which was mostly coins. And I realized I had no idea what Canadian coins were, so I pulled up my phone and looked everything up. Once I finished, I looked up and one of the bartenders was grinning at me – “I can help you with the coins.” I was like, yes, but so can the phone, and it’s less embarrassing…
Then off to the Pegasus, much more of a bar, where I had another beer. (I don’t usually drink beer, but I was in that mood.) Had a nice time, but there wasn’t really a reason to hang around.
Then back to the subway station, where I again got confused – it looked to me like that station had no way onto the southbound platform. (In NY, that happens for some station – you have to enter on the correct side of the street, there’s no crossover.) So I exited and then explored the other side of Yonge Street, and found nothing, and went back to where I started. I thought I’d used up my 2nd of two rides and would have to buy another ticket, but it read it as a ‘transfer’ and let me in – and then I found the platform.
Got back to Union Station and then, worriedly, started patting my pockets. WHERE WAS MY WALLET? Oh fuck. I hadn’t brought a bag with me, just my coat, so if it wasn’t in my coat pocket or my pants pocket… and I realized the coat pockets had holes in it. Possibly the wallet had gone through the hole and into the lining but I patted the coat down and found nothing. AAAAAAAAAAAAA. So… first night in a foreign country, I’ve lost my wallet. Was it pickpocketed? Did it fall down a drain? No idea.
Panickedly, I went back to my hotel, did a very thorough search of everything I’d been wearing, and no good. So… shit. Into problem-solving mode (after two drinks and travel-tiredness)… I had my passport, right there on the dresser – so I could get on a plane and go home when I was ready. I had my phone. I had my laptop. So could access bank accounts and email and such.
I went downstairs and talked to the concierge, who then pulled in a manager. Basically, I was like, ‘how can you help me?’. They pulled up my hotel account and were like, ‘well, we have your credit card info, so you’re fine here‘. I was like, ‘ok, wasn’t worried about that, but OK’. I asked if I could Venmo them money and they could give me cash, but that wasn’t something they were willing to do. And they didn’t really have any other good suggestions that weren’t obvious. “Go to your bank… oh, tomorrow’s Sunday…” “Yeah”.
How would I get cash? Oh, maybe Western Union. I called my dad (waking him up, unfortunately), told him what was going on and asked him to be ready to send me money if I couldn’t figure out anything else.
Bad night of sleep, but I did figure out some stuff by the time I woke up. First, somewhere in there, I managed to set up Apple Pay on my phone with one of the credit cards that was in the wallet (the phone knew the number, I knew the CVV code). So, although I’d never done that before, I knew I could now pay for stuff with my phone. And I also realized that I didn’t need Dad, I could probably Western Union myself. And as it turned out, there was a Western Union in the hotel’s newsstand. So I did send myself money – but it turned out that I’d sent myself more money than the newsstand had, and I had to send me another transfer, smaller – and then the credit card declined it because it looked suspicious, and I had to reassure them and do it a third time – but after quite a bit of struggle, ended up with Canadian cash.
So now I had cash on hand, a way to pay with credit cards (my phone), and an ID. I should be able to get through the rest of the trip OK, and then once home, I could regroup and figure out what was next.
To be continued…
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