3:00 flight delayed until 4:00.  Got there at check-in time.  2:55.  No one there from the airlines.  A few passengers looking confused.

3:40 No sign of any of the airline attendants.  Entire hallway full of passengers looking even more confused and checking their airline apps.

4:00.  Still no sign of airline personnel.  Crowd getting restless but mostly full of nice, polite Filipinos and orderly Koreans.  I log on to check just how long the flight is REALLY delayed.  The YVR site says the updated departure time is 4:00.  Clearly not.

4:20.  Airline personnel arrive.  Being orderly, we form a line.  They stand around for a bit then let us into the waiting gate area.  Why they couldn’t have done this earlier is beyond me?  We could have watched the planes come and go. Got some drinks.  Had a ton more seats to sit in.

Ah well.

Got onboard.  Window seat.  Quiet young man (jeez, did I just say ‘young man’?) sat beside me and didn’t say a word.  Just how I like it.

Flight there was amazing.  I was mesmerized by clouds.  They looked like ice cream scoops and fluffy mashed potatoes and towering plateaus and rolling seas.  I honestly got so lost in the clouds, I didn’t notice when the stewardess came by and took my food tray away.

I also didn’t notice something else that would become somewhat important later.

Apart from the clouds, there were gigantic mountains, hills that gleamed like copper in the setting sun and vast white, spreads of salt flats and then, there it was, Vegas, a huge sprawl of a city in the middle of nowhere.

The flight took 2 1/2 hrs but went by so quickly.  I was fed, no one talked to me and the view was spectacular.  As an added bonus, my newfangled ear-plugs stopped my ears from hurting like hell and left me only partially hearing impaired.  So cool.

A good thing because when I landed, it all went pear-shaped.