And I, er, occasionally readjust the sat nav in the car if it slides out of position. And that is about it.
Despite my lack of participation, and our almost totally divergent tastes, interests and physical prowess, somehow we seem to get on. Much may hinge on my tolerance. Even our musical tastes are sufficiently unalike that listening to something in the car can be a trial of compromise. My (I have to say this) impeccable taste in indie rock impresses my young friend not one jot, so I get only limited use from my iPod player in the car, with Thibault taking refuge in the darker recesses of country music. Honestly. With compromise largely around 1970s dance music, which to me was at least a nostalgia fest.
But off we headed on our long journey - some 3000kms of driving all in all, starting in Calgary. Well that was where the driving started. By one of those quirks in international air travel, it was cheaper to fly past Calgary to Vancouver and then fly back to Calgary, only to then proceed to drive back to Vancouver, than to fly direct to Calgary.
Highlight of journey out, inevitably, was not being squeezed into ever more cramped seats, but the hour or so we had to kill in Vancouver before the transfer, which we spent in an airport bar. We got chatting to a woman who was trying to outdo us mere mortals by showing her intellectual prowess. Her description of travels in China and picking up the language were somewhat thwarted by my Mandarin speaking mate. Her attempt to impress by slipping mid conversation into French were adequately thwarted by the same source as Thibault could ask her, in his impeccable French, to stick to English as his friend wasn't fluent like him. And then, when we said we were lawyers she started on comparisons of English French and Latin for legal language. Now my turn to point out I had read Roman Law at Oxford and indeed some of Justinian in Latin. She quickly reversed out of that area as a topic for conversation.
Calgary airport has (for me) just one item of note - the baggage carousels. At Heathrow (and anywhere else I have been you just surround the carousels and stare vacantly at your fellow passengers on the other side waiting patiently for the luggage to start arriving. But no such possibility here as between the carousels they "sell" Canada, with little tableaux of, say Canadian wildlife.
For Thibault it just brought relief that he could get back on his smartphone. Youngsters.
There was supposed to be a complementary airport shuttle bus to our hotel. We could see where we were meant to stand, and evidently we had just missed a previous bus, but they ran every 30 minutes. So pretty much half an hour later a shuttle bus arrived emblazoned with Holiday Inn logos. So we asked the driver if this also served our hotel, he asked us to show the address which Thibault proceeded to show him and he told us to get in. So we did.
Now we were staying at an airport hotel, and these shuttle buses normally serve a number of hotels. But we soon realised he was going rather farther than anticipated. Indeed all the way to the Holiday Inn which was miles away. And only there. When we remonstrated that we had asked him if he went there he had told us to get in, he offered only to take us back to the airport to start the whole process again; not exactly what you want after more than 12 hours of flying.
We were pretty pissed off and tried to get a taxi from the front desk at the Holiday Inn to our actual hotel, only to be persuaded by reception there to get back on our bus, the staff having explained to the hapless driver where to take us on his way back to the airport. And before you think we were just stupid, there was another bloke on the bus who had done exactly what we had done, been told to get in and was also therefore stranded not at his hotel. So the three of us set out again in the hands of our kidnapper.
Our hotel came into sight and he asked if it was here and we confirmed to the driver that was indeed our hotel. At which point he asks the other bloke if that is his hotel, and he says it isn't and explains where his hotel is. And to our bemusement instead of dropping us off at our hotel, he takes this bloke to his hotel, and then expected us to go there too. We pointed out that we had already shown him our hotel by address, by sight and through the Holiday Inn staff's careful directions to him, but were now further away than when we had started.
Our man was clearly not the brightest, and Thibault was again keen we make a break for it and try and get a taxi from this hotel, but I persuaded him to have one more go at the bloke, and use our own sat nav to navigate him back. This itself was far from straightforward although in hindsight worth it for the comedy value. So the sat nav would in its mechanical voice say something like "In 300 metres turn right", Thibault would repeat "next right" and the driver would, despite hearing "right turn" twice, ask quizzically "right?"
You would think this procedure should at least produce certainty that we would turn right with its triple verbal confirmation being a fail-safe. But no, because as the driver asks "right here?" he at the same time points left! Its very difficult to work out how to say "yes right" but also counteract the gesture of left, short of springing from the back seat screaming "right you idiot" and pointing which way right is in front of him. Indeed the temptation to just grab the steering wheel was hard to resist by this stage, not least as going from airport to airport hotel was now taking almost as long as flying from Vancouver to Calgary!
Anyway, we somehow made it to the hotel before Thibault blew a gasket. The Applause Hotel was actually pretty decent when we got there, and even with the lateness of the hour could offer us a passable burger before we turned in. Tomorrow would be a better day - an early start and straight off to Banff.
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