How E. Jean Carroll Got Left Behind In Newfoundland

“So long, Old Man! The United States Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, bids thee farewell.”

E. Jean Carroll has just beaten Trump in his appeal of her $5-million sexual abuse case; Trump has one more appeal and then it’s all over: you f*** up, you fork up.

He’s also on the hook for $83-million in a separate defamation case. Together with interest penalties, he will owe more than $100-million.

The E. Jean news is very topical. I just wrote a review of her latest book, “Not My Type”, and intended to publish it today.

My review of her book is in Newfoundland.

So this will be the first Monday when there is no inciteful glimpse into one of the dark souls of the political movement.

I will publish it when I get my computer back.

I thought the story of how it got there, would be a nice life lesson for many others.

My wife and I planned to go from our home in Nova Scotia to Ottawa, where our son, his wife, and our two little grandchildren live. It’s a simple 90-minute flight.

The morning of the flight, we got an email notice saying the flight was cancelled. It was a harbinger of a more ominous under-story than one flight on one airline, but we did not know it at the time.

We were given an option of flying out later that day to St. John’s, Newfoundland, then from there to Toronto, Ontario, and thence a short hop to Ottawa.

The trip would take twelve hours instead of 90 minutes. But we were in a good mood; we had not viewed Newfoundland for years, and even an aerial view would be spectacular.

Besides, the other direct flights were booked for days.

So we went with the insane Newfoundland option.

For those who Want To Know, the geography of this trip was interesting. We were flying from a province that was once part of Africa, to an area with the oldest rocks in the world – the geo-centre of the Earth. We would scoot from there to Canada’s largest city, and hence to its capital, Ottawa.

Altogether, we had transformed our original flight of some 950 kms into one stretching 3,300 kms.

What could go wrong?

When you consider it, we were doing a distance equal to a trip from Newfoundland to the UK. The technology and the cost had changed the travel equation so much that a life-threatening trip of a week on a transatlantic liner only one lifetime ago could now be considered as ‘small change’ in a flight plan.

I carefully repacked my bag so that my carry-on was light; I pulled my work computer – the one bearing my E. Jean Carroll story – out and put it into my large checked bag.

As it turns out, we were the only ones who made that choice; my wife overheard a flight attendant say to a colleague: “here are the ones who are doing the Alternative Option.

Unaware that we were Objects Of Curiosity, I settled back and admired the flight in the small plane. The approaching coast was dramatic: the soaring granite cliffs, the fishing boats tagged with white lines of propeller wash, the rising forests of the great province. Homes isolated amid dark green pine forests gradually gave way to the increased speckling of urban housing as we closed with the city. We were close to the spot where Marconi had set up his first trans-Atlantic radio tower, and received live radio news from Europe. Soon, people would be gathering in groups of two or three around the magic crystal radio receivers, listening to the concert music a world away.

We had an unhurried three-hour wait in Saint John’s, before the three-hour hop to Toronto.

It was a relaxing flight. The clouds were piling up, white and embracing.

Our flight attendant was a lady who had teenage girls who could be left alone while their mother flitted between cities. She had a side-shaved hairdo that looked a bit “trans”, but she was the heart of warmth. She said it would have been easy to get stressed on that job, with all the complaints of the passengers, but she was happy to help and bring some calm into the world.

When we got to Toronto we found that the connecting flight to Ottawa had been delayed by a day. There was an option to fly to Edmonton, halfway across Canada, but this time we drew the line. Firmly. We had the porter send a note to St. John’s: Send the bags to Ottawa, not Edmonton.

We went to a hotel room for the night, enduring the long walks at the airport past the lines of smokers. We finally bedded down around midnight.

In the early morning we caught the train to Ottawa. Five hours later and we were in our son’s house, amid grandchildren and warmth.

Ironically, his assignment as Test Pilot that day had been to fly to Nova Scotia and back.

Also ironically, his own bags from his trip to Europe to test an aircraft had been lost by the carrier…in Casablanca! The very name of romantic travel - now a holding-tank for mysterious baggage drops. Days later, he still doesn’t know where they are. He did inspect the ‘Lost Bags’ room in Casablanca, to no avail. It was piled high with lost luggage, and reeked of rotting food that had not reached its destination.

So we got to Ottawa, but our checked bags – with the E. Jean Carroll story aboard – were evidently still in St. John’s. I have no idea why.

Altogether, our 90-minute trip had taken 18 hours, a hotel room, a train and almost no food.

We found out later that there had been many cancellations in Toronto that day.

Over the previous week, in fact, there had been more than 7,000 cancellations and flight delays in the Northeast.

The weather was not the heaving storms that tear up runways, but the unsettled local disturbances that make take-offs and landings hazardous. Cold fronts, heavy rainfall, thunderstorms, strong winds, and sweltering heat advisories make runway activity hazardous.

And fellow passengers who are in the same boat (as it were) I remind you: you are entitled to a full refund if you opt not to travel. However, weather-related cancellations are not considered controllable, meaning compensation is limited.

As annoyed as I was with my own cancellation, I have even more pity for my American friends who were travelling home after a July 4^th weekend.

It’s bad enough for Americans who are getting held up in Trump’s visa line-ups, but there are plentiful stories out there about family men being wrongfully arrested; families being torn apart.

Overall, in my experience, the machines may have faltered due to environmental pressures, but the people were wonderful.

Ultimately, that’s all that matters.

And I’ll send you that E. Jean Carroll article as soon as it gets liberated from Newfoundland!

LATE NEWS: I have just found out that our luggage was transferred to Edmonton. No one knows why. That’s 4,321 kms from St. John’s. From Edmonton back to Ottawa it is 2,850kms. That’s an extra 7,171 kms.

By the time you read the E. Jean Carroll story, it will have travelled 10,000 kms. That’s halfway around the world, at the latitude of Canada.

But when it IS published, it will reach a global audience in milliseconds.

The ingenuity of humans. A system that can cross the fabrics of glass networks in an instant, is rarely even considered when you read a daily column.

It makes you think that ultimately, we are on a good journey, and can beat any obstacle.

Unless you are in Lost Luggage, which is a metaphor for Trump’s MAGA movement.

But more on that later…