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Home, Barely...

Returning home from a memorable trip can be bittersweet.

It’s 4:34 am. You’re jerked awake, lurched forward as your London night bus, the N9, pulls to a sudden stop. From a window on the upper deck you read a brightly lit sign: “HEATHROW AIRPORT.”

Success! You’re due to fly home to Canada in six hours, and the silver lining in this situation is that at least you’ve given yourself a generous window of time to get through customs. (No more having to vault yourself over a nice Czech man to make it out of security before the gate closes, as you may have had to do last time.)

But wait. Bleary-eyed, you pull a crumpled flight itinerary out of your cargo pants pocket. “LONDON GATWICK,” it says.

Crap. It seems that you and your friend have both fallen asleep on the bus home after a night on the town to celebrate your last day in merry old England. And fate hasn’t even shown you pity by guiding you to the correct airport. Not that it would matter; your backpack is safely stowed away at your friend’s house in an outer district of the city called “Chiswick." That’s 18 kilometers of chocolate and souvenir t-shirts that you’re not prepared to lose.

And so you and your friend are forced to stand in that chilly December air, half-asleep, as you wait for a different night bus to double back in the right direction. A small circle of air-traffic-control workers lingers a few feet away, puffing at their cigarettes. They seem to be laughing at you. You don't blame them.

The second bus, an N6, arrives eventually and drops you off at the Gunnersbury tube station, which you know to be somewhere in the vicinity of your stuff. You manage to orient yourself and, after scaling a chain-link fence and walking a further seven blocks in the pitch-black darkness, you arrive at the doorstep. There’s time to catch an hour of sleep, but then you’re bound for the Calgary International Airport. Like a rock star, you emerge from that west London suburb with a backpack slung over one shoulder, dark eye circles guised by a pair of aviator sunglasses. You swig back some of a £1.89 carton of chocolate milk.

Ah, you’re going to miss your travel days...