I had an interesting night

"I had an interesting night, last night," my seat mate on the Regina-Calgary flight said to me as soon as the seat belt sign was turned off. He was probably in his late fifties, a full head of white curly hair, slim neither handsome nor ugly.

As a writer, my immediate thought--what a great opening for a piece of fiction. I looked interested and he continued to tell me about his adventures.

His flight to Calgary, the last out, was cancelled. The airline tried to book him a room, but all the rooms in Regina were taken. The same with the B&Bs. They offered to fly him to Toronto where there was a room then fly him back in the morning to Regina for the first Regina-Calgary plane. The thing that made it interesting was the geography.

Think Bangor-Boston or Geneva-Zurich flights. Short hops really. You could almost taxi the distance. They were sending him as far away as Washington DC or Stockholm and not bringing him back to his final destination but to another destination.

"I'm too old for this," he told them. Finally they booked and taxied him to a hotel in Moose Jaw called Oasis, which he claimed wasn't, and taxied him back and put him in a seat next to me.

We continued chatting. He is a geologist, travels all over the world and has one son, a journalism student, battling cancer. During that short trip we delved into a variety of subjects.

He may have had an interesting night, but he made the morning for me into an interesting flight.