Lance Allred the official website of the Lance Allred who is not the professional Poker player

Happy Thanksgiving…. To Me!

It appeared that the gods were smiling on me this year, and fortuitously allowing my contract in Pesaro to end just in time for me to fly back home for Thanksgiving! As I packed up my bags, not worrying about where the next job would be coming from, I was giddy with excitement, imagining the sweet potato and pecan pies, and the turkey and mashy tates.

Ali, the team manager picked me up at 4 am and drove me to Bologna, where I caught a flight to Paris, that then would be connected straight to Seattle, then to Missoula, Montana as the family is converging there this year… and I am very happy about that.

It was a grueling 10 hour flight, mostly because of the 18-month-old across the aisle from me that was something out of this world. He cried the WHOLE time. All 10 hours. I am not lying. Just sobbing and sobbing. While his mother and grandmother, both of whom wore Indian/Hindu attire, peacefully ignored him. About 2 hours into the flight my annoyance towards the young child soon turned to respect and even admiration, as this kid was not going to break. No. He was going to cry, tears streaming down his cheeks for 10 straight hours. Like a train wreck, I could not turn away. The need for sleep that could only be achieved if the kid would ever stop screaming, was soon trumped by my fascination as I just observed, with veneration, this demi-god in human baby form. “HE will eventually have to make himself sick,” I reasoned, believing that he could not go on that much longer screaming and wailing. “Or at least he will just tire himself out, and he will just pass out and go to sleep.”

Nope. This kid easily lost half of his body weight through tear drops in the ten hour flight, but as it was no matter, as damn it all, he was determined to cry the whole time. And he was going to do it. Oh yes, he was.
We landed and went through customs, allowing ourselves to believe it really is making a difference, and then I sat in Seattle for a 4 and a half hour layover. My agent John lives in Seattle, but he ignored me, as he no doubt was not wanting to have to share any pie with me, knowing full well that I would devour them.

Finally the plane begins to board to Missoula, Montana. I get on, and take my seat. Not a very full flight. I turn my hearing aids off as the sound of the jet engines, especially when the doors are still open, cause my hearing aids to go haywire. We take off. 45 min flight.

I look out the window as the plane descends and I am trying to find the familiar sights, but I am not seeing anything. What direction did we fly in from? I look over across the aisle and I see a canadian passport, and then another, and then another. I turn to the people behind, canadian passport. “Excuse me,” I ask politely. “This plane is going to Missoula, Montana right.”
A smile, but then a ghostly pale face of pity creeps on the lady’s face. “You’re joking right?” She sees my face. “Oh, please tell me you’re joking.”
“No.”
“Oh. No. We have just landed in Kelowna.”
I blink. “Is it then connecting to Missoula?”
“No.”
I then am taken back by a hot flash, as I begin to sweat in 3 seconds flat. I barely am able to murmur, “Um….. well, where is Kelowna?”
“British Columbia.”
I tried. Oh I tried, but I could not stop the tears welling up in my eyes, as I dropped my head and just started sobbing. Just like that little boy on the flight from Paris- He taught me well.

How does this happen?
Well, I don’t like to talk about my hearing very much. On poor quality intercoms and speakers, and even on the best of them, I don’t hear them well, the garbled, static swamped words. I just don’t. And I don’t admit it very well either.
And so when the intercom says, “we are now boarding to Kelowna,” it sounds like Missoula, at least to me it does, because I hear and count the 3 syllables….
KE-LOW-NA
MI-SOU-LA
And the vowels are not precise, but are similar in their tone and pronunciation.
And on the shoddy schedule board, it shows that Missoula is indeed up next to be departing from gate c-10.
How the ticket machine did not register, nor the gate attendant missed my ticket, I don’t know.
How I got on an international flight without showing my passport….. I don’t know.

And of course the one seat I am sitting in, 18-b, is a vacant seat on the plane to Kelowna, so nothing is brought up. Had someone been in that seat, obviously an awkward and embarrassing moment would have ensued and I would have taken a walk of shame of the plane. But I would rather have that and still have Thanksgiving dinner with my family for the first time in a long time, than sitting in the back of an emptying plane, somewhere in Canada, doing a sob of shame.

Furthermore, had I not turned my hearing aids off, like I usually do when boarding a plane, I might have heard the flight attendant say something about Canada….

It was just a perfect storm- concocted by the very gods that I thought were being gracious by letting me come home. Nope, they had to get one last laugh in, before cutting me free.

So, here I am now, in the hotel that the airline has arranged, as they will be flying me back to Seattle tomorrow and then connecting me to Missoula on the same flight I missed today. But, thankfully we call it Thanksgiving weekend for a reason, and my family will now be having Thanksgiving on Friday this year. But still, it would have been nice to be home today, on the real Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving Mom…… hopefully next year.

Now…. let’s Google Kelowna and find out just where in the hell it is exactly.