Traveling during the Holidays

So being from Nova Scotia on Canada’s East Coast I don’t make it home that often with the exception being Christmas and the odd wedding or two. I generally have interesting things happen to me on flights and this year was no exception. I booked a flight from LA to Halifax via New York and Boston so I could try out Virgin America and use some frequent flier points and everything looked fine.

The interesting stuff started with a big rain storm in Southern California the morning of my 7am flight out of LA, which caused me to miss said flight by about 10 minutes (note to self: don’t stop for breakfast on the way to catch a plane). This caused me to miss my connection in New York and ended up with me spending the night in Boston – no big deal. However the next morning Boston got a good sized snow storm that ended up delaying all and canceling most of the flights out of Logan International.

While waiting for the flight to Halifax to leave I ended up meeting two people from Miramichi, New Brunswick and we ended up teaming up in an effort to find a way home. All of the flights to Eastern Canada ended up being canceled that day and by dumb luck we ended up on a flight to Bangor, Maine thanks to a captain that was in the right place at the right time.

Now heading to Bangor while trying to get to Halifax would generally be a pretty dumb move but the mother one of my traveling companions (Hi Allison!) was willing to drive the 6+ hours to pick us up and drive us to Miramichi – after driving for most of the day already. After eating dinner, having an uneventful border crossing and about 6 hours we ended up in Miramichi where Allison graciously hosted me for the night.

So how did I get to Halifax? I took the Via Rail train from Miramichi to Halifax which, of course was 4 hours late. Even more interesting things continued to happen as I randomly met a roommate of my cousin who goes to Mount Allison University – small world.

Thank God for wonderful mothers.

Startup Tips

They have a bunch of excellent startup tips over at ReadWriteWeb. Live them, breathe them and most importantly follow them – this is a list I wish I’d had when I started my first company (even though we ended up doing most of what they said, we had to learn it the hard way).