Was it inauspicious to pick March 15 as our departure date?

March is still winter. Worst, it has a nasty way of reminding you especially when you have travel plans. By yesterday, the eve of our departure, we were looking at cancelled flights all over eastern Canada and New England with the chance of our flight to Toronto being affected. The ripple effect could be disastrous for us because our final flight to Kathmandu was not booked through Air Canada, like our flights to Delhi. Late Tuesday, we used Air Canada’s bad-weather option to change our flight to Toronto from 6 p.m. to 1 p.m. It gave us peace of mind that we’d make our connection to Delhi, but it wiped five precious hours from our last day and added it to our layover in Toronto. I’ll find out when I get there if my early packing paid off, there was no time to check.

Landing in Toronto, we could see a dusting of snow melting rapidly. It was a different kind of meltdown inside the terminal where the effect of multiple flight delays and cancellations was still being sorted out. Customer service desks were dealing with long patient lines of resigned, blank-faced people. In the true Canadian way, no one seemed to feel the need to raise their voice or berate the agents.

And so begins the adventure.