It was about midnight. I was dropping a friend off for his flight to Mexico. Since the flight left around 2:30 or 3:00 am, we didn't bother to sleep, and we didn't have anything to do. So that's how we ended up wandering Calgary International Airport in the middle of the night.

So the first thing to do when you get to YYC is to go straight to Tim Hortons. So we sat down, got out the chess board, and proceeded to play a very serious game. I usually piss around for the first game, and play a little better the next time. This time though, I gave it my all right from the get go. I won. I never win the first game. Maybe too many honey glazed donuts and too much coffee actually serves to increase my ability in some strange way! We analyzed his mistake and backtracked a bit, and the he won the game on a slightly different course. Then he said my win didn't count. Argh! The bastard!

YYC was undergoing a renovation to one of it's terminals at the time, so we wandered around and looked at it all. Then we found the job kiosk. We took turns entering in bogus information and laughed our asses off, and tried not to look too suspicious when the security guards and janitors went by. After that, we went to a different Tim Hortons, and ate some more donuts and drank some more coffee. It might have been a productive night if I had brought my laptop along.

The Calgary International Airport is one of the most dynamic and ahead of its time airports in North America, (i.e. they throw money at all sorts of vague projects. For instance turning the airport into a shopping mall, or installing internet-connected terminals called ePorts all over the place.) They are currently expanding the airport to increase capacity, adding a new "finger".

The Calgary Airport Authority was a government run organization until 1992, when is was privatized. The CAA, as it calls itself internally (but never externally due to copyright problems with the Canadian Auto Association), is a very lax workplace. Despite this, work actually gets done, and profits are good.

Website: http://www.calgaryairport.com/

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