First of all, this is my first trip report, and second, the trip happened over a year ago, so while there are a lot of photos, the details may be a bit scarce.

My wife Amy and I moved to California from Toronto in September, 2005, about 2 months before our son Sage was born. After living there for awhile, we decided to fly home to pay a visit to my family over a long weekend in August 2006.

We had taken our son on a relatively short flight in March from Sacramento to Portland, and he was just fine, so we had high hopes of him being ok for a longer trip. Nevertheless, we decided to take a flight with a stopover halfway to allow us all to get out of the plane and for Sage to crawl around in case he was sick of flying. So we aimed to stopover in Denver, pretty darn close to halfway between San Francisco and Toronto.

We booked the flight online, traveling on a UA 777 to Denver, transferring to an AC E175 for the other half. It would be another AC E175 coming back, transferring to a UA A320.

About a month from departure, AC changed both of their segments to the A319, which bummed me out – I enjoyed the one flight I had taken in the Embraer 175 and also thought the AVOD would help entertain the little one. But, oh well.

Our flight was set to depart out of SFO at 6am, so we drove from our home near Yosemite to San Francisco the afternoon before. We stayed at a hotel overnight and left our car there. At 4:10am the next morning, we were on the hotel’s airport shuttle bus. Sage tried to sleep through the excitement but woke up soon after arriving at the airport.

We had paid for paper tickets, which got us out of the huge lineup to UA’s check-in computers. We cleared security, and went to our gate to zone out a bit.

FLIGHT 1
August 4, 2006
United Airlines Flight 146
SFO – DEN
6:00 – 9:22
Boeing 777-200 N210UA

View Large View Medium

Photo © Manas Barooah

Since it was the first flight of the day, the aircraft was sitting at the gate, and everyone was on board and was ready to go by 5:50. Sage started making a fuss, but our poor little sleep-deprived child fell back asleep the moment we started taxiing to the runway. The dawn had just broken as we roared down the runway and took off into the wild blue yonder. An early right turn after takeoff allowed me to crane my neck and catch this shot of the airport.



Got a few more shots during the climbout, featuring the huge 777 wing…





But after that, I followed my son’s lead and nodded off. When we all woke up, we were on final descent into Denver.

After deplaning, I ran first to the bathroom, then back to the gate to get a photo of the plane.





Not wanting to abandon my family, we all found out where are next gate was and walked over there. We had more than 2 hours to kill, so we took turns watching Sage crawl around while my wife went and found food, and while I wandered the airport.







This Air Canada A319 was parked at the gate next to ours, and the absence of an arriving Air Canada flight had us thinking that our gate might in fact be one gate over.



But lo and behold, an A319 painted in the Air Canada transitional scheme (new tail with white paint) showed up at our gate and emptied it’s load of passengers.

FLIGHT 2
August 4, 2006
Air Canada Flight 1040
DEN – YYZ
11:15 – 16:19
Airbus A319 C-GKNW

View Large View Medium

Photo © Michael Durning



We took our seats one row behind the first class section, but were told that we could not sit there since we had a lap infant. So, we moved to the starboard side of the plane, one row back. No big whoop although we had to give up the legroom.

The flight got underway about 40 minutes behind schedule, but no one seemed in a particularly foul mood about it.

I held Sage who looked happily out the window throughout the taxi and several minutes into the flight. At that point we focused on playing with him, reading, and keeping him occupied. As luck would have it, about halfway through the flight he was again out like a light. I used the opportunity to take some more photos.





We started our descent into Toronto flying by the downtown on downwind to 24R. I love that approach because of the views!







I also love it because it often gives me a glimpse of the home I grew up in, near the intersection of Kennedy and Finch in Scarborough. The house is circled, taken while turning base to final:



Sage woke up as the landing gear came down. Amy was happy to hold him though as I kept snapping.





I was back in my home town after being away for 10 months, the longest ever spent away from my family. I was so excited, and kept snapping away.







We pulled into a gate beside another A319, C-GWTF – WTF - which I thought was hilarious. Of course I was also ecstatic to be home. Plus the small bottle of wine I had with dinner helped.





We had a great 4 days visiting friends and family, but alas, it was time to get going home. We were dropped off at Terminal 2, and went through the usual monotony of kiosk check-in, baggage check-in and US Customs pre-clearance. I was told off by the customs agent for not being in the right line. Since I had a US Visa, I was to get in the visa holders line. We told him that there were only 2 lines – Canadian citizens, and US citizens/Green Card holders. He said there should have been a line, grumbled a bit about it, and stamped us through.

The waiting area of Terminal 2 was, as always, about as exciting as a corn flake. Finally though, it was time to board and get this show going.

FLIGHT 3
August 8, 2006
Air Canada Flight 1043
SFO – DEN
17:05 – 18:37
Airbus A319 C-GAQZ

View Large View Medium

Photo © Charles Conklin


The flight departed 15 minutes late. As we taxied to the runway, I again had my camera pressed up against the window snapping photos. Lots of Air Canada aircraft.







We took off into a brilliant blue sky. Sage was pretty content through the whole flight but did not sleep. We passed some heavy-looking weather somewhere along the route.





We descended into Denver and, for the first time, I got a chance to take some of those great photos of the plane’s shadow.







We taxied into Concourse B, and I got a few more shots.





One we got our stuff and exited the plane, we had only about 40 minutes until our next flight. There really wasn’t much distance to travel though, as our next flight was departing just a few gates away. When we got there, we saw a faded-looking A320 awaiting us.



FLIGHT 4
August 8, 2006
United Airlines Flight 761
SFO – DEN
19:35 – 20:56
Airbus A320 N416UA

View Large View Medium

Photo © Timothy Keeney


We boarded the A320, and the inside looked well-worn – just like the outside. The flight departed on time, and as dusk was settling in, I got some nice photographs of the company A320 that followed us to the runway.







Sage had fallen asleep by now, as we rolled down the runway into the Denver evening sky.



The sun set shortly thereafter.



The flight was very uneventful. Sage slept the whole way and I relaxed and listened to Channel 9. We arrived into San Francisco a little early, but the short layover time in Denver meant that our bags did not make the connection. We were promised them at our hotel the next morning, so we said thank you and headed back to the hotel for a good night’s rest.

The next morning, we waited and waited with no sign of our bags. Just before we had to check out, I called the United baggage number and found that the bags were sitting at SFO. Annoyed because we wanted to get home, I hopped the hotel shuttle back to the airport and within 40 minutes we loaded up our car’s trunk and opened the doors.

Ugh, swarming ants. They went after some mints I had hidden in the central console. It took us an hour to get them cleaned out. But finally we hit the highway after some lunch, and proceeded across the San Mateo bridge towards Oakland and the Central Valley. Then,



Our car wigged out along the 580. We sat for over an hour in 100+ temperatures waiting for a tow truck. Finally one came, but we could not get the car looked at until the next morning. So we were forced to spend the night in Livermore, which wasn’t all that bad, just an unexpected expense.

My 29th birthday started with a $450 bill to replace the serpentine belt tensioner in our engine, but after that we were good to go. It was also the morning where the liquid explosive threat first hit, and we thanked our lucky stars that we hadn’t been flying that day.

Thanks for reading and I hope you all enjoyed my first trip report!