Daydreams of a Pack Mule

My job sometimes requires me to travel to deliver documents in person, a courier of sorts. These documents are ones that usually are of too much value to trust to a commercial courier, or require delivery on a tighter deadline than a courier can afford us. Next day delivery doesn't always happen when you live on an island.

Enter me: the Flying Pack Mule.

I do enough traveling that I don't mind the disrupted schedules and having to haul luggage here and there. I was actually pretty relaxed, because when people travel for our company, there is a whole team of people looking out for you in the background, just in case things go wrong.

So, the other day, when my first flight off the Island was grounded due to mechanical failure, I sat back and thought, "Well, at least I'm not in this on my own."

"Team Travel" at work got me onto a float plane to the mainland: my first float plane flight ever. The hubby, who is an amateur pilot, was jealous, and he should have been: it was the most peaceful, relaxing flight I'd ever been on. I was too excited (and maybe a little embarrassed) to take photos of the lounge, but it was full of comfy leather armchairs, with free muffins, tea and coffee. So civilized.

In the air, I delighted in the scenery. It was a quiet, 15-minute flight that I shared with three other passengers and the pilot. I saw a pod of porpoises, but I wasn't quick enough to catch a photo of them.




After I landed, I took the shuttle to the main airport in Vancouver, gulped down a large cafe misto, went through security, and boarded another plane. As I stood in line to board, I was distracted by a lady wearing a beautiful knit sweater: camel-coloured, knit plainly on the front, but with a cable and lace pattern down the back, in a bulky or aran-weight yarn. I stared openly as we shuffled along, trying to memorize it, and fighting with all my might not to take out my phone and take photos of it. There are certain behaviours one must keep under control in an airport...

In the air, I settled back for the 75-minute flight, enjoyed my free pretzels and a glass of tomato juice, dozed a bit, then got ready to get out as the plane landed. In the airport, I bought a big bottle of water, then got into a taxi. As the taxi pulled away, my phone rang.

"Adriene, you have to come back. The deadline for those documents has been extended, and the bosses don't want them to be submitted."

So, I sighed, and the taxi took me around the block, and I walked back into the airport, downed the large bottle of water before going back through security and got onto another plane. By this point, I was feeling pretty tired - I'd been up since 5:45am. And when I get tired, I get weird. And by weird, I mean that the line between the things said in my brain and the things I say aloud gets a little blurred. "I.D. Where's my I.D.?" I uttered. "I don't mind flying," I said, to no one in particular as I sat down. I glanced at the girl sitting next to me. She looked away. I sat down and buckled my seat belt.

In my weary state, I found myself gazing at the screen on the back of the seat in front of me and reading out the ad that flashed past, "Popcorners: the new shape of popcorn." I noticed the girl next to me trying to avert her eyes from my weirdness. It was then I decided I better close my eyes and try to rest.

I sat there and day/sleepdreamed about the sweater I'd seen earlier. It was a daydream that kept me going for the rest of the taxi trips and through the ferry trip I had to take the rest of the way home (the flights to the Island were full due to the mechanical failure of the first plane earlier that day). I'm still dreaming of this sweater, and I still haven't figured out how it was made. I wish I'd been brave enough to take a photo of it. So far, the closest I've seen through my searches was a bolero pattern by Kitman Figueroa offered free on Jimmy Beans Wool. If I took this pattern and flipped it 90 degrees and knit it into the back of a sweater, it would be close, but the lacy part is a bit too complex compared to what I'd seen that day...


I'm going to keep searching, and maybe I'll be lucky enough to find the actual sweater I saw. In the meantime, I'm booked to go back on the same trip next week. Perhaps this trip will be slightly less eventful, but maybe uneventful is not the way to go. After all, what would I have to talk about in this blog?

Till then, this is Pack Mule, signing off...

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