If you’re just joining us, this is a story that started back in 2016 with a rather stressful airport security experience in Toronto–the mother of all bad airport security experiences, you might say. So stressful that it kept me and Oliver out of the air for 18 months.

It’s been a long road back: a big milestone was Autism Aviators, back in May, which was a huge help for Oliver and me, taking us through a realistic airport experience from start to finish in a positive light. It helped reset our stress, and removed some of the triggering power of simply being at the airport.

Next came our June trip by air to Ontario: it started off wonderfully, with an easy, breezy security experience in Charlottetown and a comfortable flight up to Toronto.

The flight back from Toronto didn’t go so well: it wasn’t quite the mother of all bad airport security experiences, but it came close, and while some of this could likely be blamed on a return to the scene of the crime, it demonstrated that the “accessible” line at Pearson Airport is anything but, at least where those with autism are concerned, as the staff were, compared to Charlottetown’s, dreadful morons. Things all came to a head when the agent asked me who takes care of Ethan, and Oliver replied that we both did; this wasn’t an acceptable answer for the agent, and he didn’t handle it well. Things went downhill from there, Oliver got very anxious and lost control, and agents at the next lane started to talk about Oliver. With Ethan’s help, and with complete and total focus on Oliver for about 20 minutes, things calmed down to the point where we could continue. “The daughter of 2016,” said Oliver just now.

I was touch and go on whether we could make this trip to Europe: Oliver really wanted to go; I really wanted to go. But I wasn’t sure I had it in me to help Oliver through another experience like that.

We talked about it, though, and decided to do our best. I boiled the trip down to two security experiences, one in Halifax and one, on the return, at Schiphol in Amsterdam: all our other intra-European travel is by train. But I would be lying if I said I haven’t had some anxiety in the days and weeks leading up to today, as has Oliver.

Oliver’s psychiatrist suggested we consider Lorazepam as a short-acting anxiety-mitigating med; I was anxious about this, in part because Lorazepam, for some people, has the opposite effect, causing anxiety rather than reducing it. So he tried it out on Sunday night. And it had no noticeable effect at all.

We headed to Halifax today with plenty of white space in our schedule, so there was no need to rush. Just before heading to check-in at 7:00 p.m., Oliver took 1 mg of Lorazepam. The line ended up being rather long, and over the next 30 minutes he eased into a mellow that rendered him slightly more relaxed and a lot more sleepy. He wasn’t catatonic, though, and was happy and conversational and even a bump at check-in (I reserved us seats, but for the return flight, not for tonight) didn’t phase him.

When it came time to go through security, we asked to go through the “family line,” and the friendly CATSA triage agent happily ushered us to a line with no wait where we were greeted by another friendly CATSA agent who ushered us into an empty checkpoint where we were greeted by a third friendly CATSA agent who gently walked us through our carry-on disgorging.

Oliver then simply walked through the security gate.

And then I walked through the security gate, and it was set off; a “random selection” said the agent. Oliver remained unphased, and took a seat to wait. A jig and a jag with the sensor wand and I was released. We gathered up our luggage and headed to the departure gate. Calm as can be.

Why was this time so smooth when Toronto was a debacle?

Certainly the Lorazepam helped, but I’d credit it with a nudge toward mellow, not with saving the day. The attitude and helpfulness and palpable lack of anxiety demonstrated by the CATSA staff was a huge help. Autism Aviators was a huge help. Oliver working really, really hard to keep calm was a huge help. It was a good idea to leave lots of time and to arrive plenty early. It was a good idea to spend our pre-check-in waiting time outside of the melee of the airport proper. It was a good idea to visit security before check-in, just to get the lay of the land.

Whatever combination of work, pharma, planning and luck were at play today, I’ll take it: it wasn’t until we had cleared security that I realized how worried I had been about Oliver and this trip. For months. It’s nice to have that weight off my shoulders, especially as we start our summer vacation.

(As I do with all blogs posts that concern the intimate ins-and-outs of living with autism, I asked Oliver to read this with an eye to accuracy and privacy, and he gave his okay for me to post, with hopes that others will find his experiences a helpful guide for their own travels).

Oliver and I haven’t traveled internationally together, alone since 2013 when we went to Tokyo when he was 12 years old.

Now he is 17, going on 18, and a burgeoning young adult, and we are off to Europe for the next two weeks.

Tonight we travel overnight to Malmö, Sweden, by way of Frankfurt and Copenhagen; we’re in Malmö until Monday, then by train to Berlin where we’ll spend three days (not nearly long enough). On Thursday, August 30 we join our friend Martina on the train from Berlin to Amersfoort where we’ll join a larger group of ragtag revolutionaries for the STM18 birthday unconference hosted by Elmine and Ton (and their daughter, who we will meet for the first time!) A short dash into Amsterdam for the night of Sept. 2 and 3 and then back to Halifax on the 4th, arriving back in Charlottetown on Sept. 5, just in time for Oliver to start grade 12 the next day.

We left Charlottetown just after 1:00 p.m., stopping at the Handpie Company in Albany for lunch (our first time at their dreamy new location in the old Bank of Nova Scotia). We made quick work of the drive to Halifax, parked the car at the Quality Inn (where they’ve upped the ante in the airport hotel wars, offering two weeks free parking with any reservation), and took the shuttle across to the airport.

As I type we are sitting in the fashionable lounge of the Alt Hotel Halifax Airport, where we have sought respite after the only recommendation from the friendly airport information desk clerk about how to kill two hours here was to “walk up and down the hall.” The hotel has tuck shop that serves coffee, and the lounge has all manner of comfortable nooks with power outlets and free wifi. If you ever have to spend any time at YHZ, come over hear and your time will be much more pleasant.

The next quest is Condor check-in for the flight to Frankfurt, followed by security and boarding. We’ve already interviewed the first-level CATSA agent about the best way to proceed, and he advised that we ask for the “family line,” which has relieved us greatly. Good on you, Halifax.

My friend Mark, upon learning that I fancied the odd fountain pen, suggested I consider attending “Pen Night,” an irregular gathering of pen afficianados held at The Bookmark bookstore in Charlottetown.

So I got myself on the mailing list.

And then watched half a dozen Pen Nights sail by, always finding myself otherwise engaged.

Fearing that the statute of limitations would see my name dropped off the list, I resolved that tonight would finally be the night.

Which is how I found myself, a few minutes after 7 o’clock, gingerly making my way into the midst of a small crowd of about ten of the pen-passionate.

And what a welcoming crowd they proved to be: generous with knowledge, patient when asked silly questions, and completely comfortable lying in the warm bath of nerdiness.

The evening began with a show-and-tell, where we were each invited to talk about a new pen, or a new paper, or a new experience. I proudly showed off my inexpensive German public school Pelikano fountain pen, passed around some lovely Japanese cardstock I picked up at Wonder Pens in Toronto in June, and passed out some of my Prince Edward Island postcards, printed this summer on my letterpress (if there was ever a group that would appreciate them, it was this).

The evening continued with a report of a trip to the Pen Show in Washington, DC, followed by a how-to for the process of converting inexpensive plastic fountain pens into a “eyedropper pens” by converting them so that the pen body, rather than a cartridge, holds the ink. Pen hacking, in other words.

We finished up with all manner of conversation, and questions, and the passing around of various things.

It was simply delightful. And I expect that I will now attend regularly, come hell or high water.

There are two public outdoor pianos in Charlottetown.

One of them is at the foot of Queen Street, under the eaves of the Charlottetown Tide Station. It was placed there by Downtown Charlottetown as an Instagramable tourism trope, and it is almost completely inoperable.

The other is a City of Charlottetown micro-grant-funded piano under the gazebo at Confederation Landing Park that is a project of Arduino for Autism. Despite having braved two summers outdoors, it’s still remarkably sound and vaguely in-tune. It also has lights.

We knew about the lights, but had never seen them until the other night when we stopped by while walking Ethan through the park. I’d always assumed the lights were broken, or that there was a secret switch or key that needed to be activated to turn them on. As it happens, all we needed to do was to plug the piano in to the electric outlet right beside it and, presto, the lights sprang to life.

Oliver sat down and took the piano through its paces. This prompted a vigorous discussion as to whether the lights were primarily affected by the pitch of the notes or by the volume of the sound; we didn’t reach a definitive conclusion.

If you’re going to visit an outdoor piano in Charlottetown, I recommend this one over the touristic one: it works better, is more fun to play, prompts more thoughtful discussion and, in the end, has more soul.

It rained for hours and hours and hours today here in Charlottetown and this made it impossible to ignore a couple of leaks in our 18 year old roof. I spent a good part of the day moving buckets around the attic.

For this and other reasons I was reminded of the day in early December 2010 when Oliver and I got up at dawn, in Venice, to take the train to Tipoteca, only to find the streets around our apartment flooded ankle-deep. As streets in Venice, in December, do.

Fortunately, at 10 years old, I could still pick up Oliver and carry him up the street to the bridge over the canal; from that point until the train station we were able to navigate on raised sidewalks that had been set up for the occasion.

When we returned, at the end of the day, the water had receded; it was as if the flood had never happened.

I’m hoping for the same outcome here tomorrow.

Oliver and I got into a debate this morning as to whether this is an entrance for centaurs or simply an entrance for those who work with horses.

I got as far as getting him to concede that if my suggestion that it was where the centaurs entered was true, it would be the more interesting and imaginative possibility.

Oliver, me, and my brother Mike, each easily identifiable by our head shape, in a mirror at dusk at the PEI Preserve Company last night.

Late in the evening, after the tourists have disappeared, the COWS cow is let off its bolts and allowed to wander.

In a blog post this morning, Green Party of PEI leader Peter Bevan-Baker writes of his party’s struggles with trying to get information about freedom of information. He writes, in part:

Several months later, government tabled their amendments to the FOIPP Act. We felt the amendments fell far short of the promise of “modernizing” the Act.  So during Question Period, my colleague, Hannah Bell, asked the current Minister Responsible, Jordan Brown, how many submissions were received and he replied “The direct answer to that question was over 40 submissions and my recollection is that the good portion of them were similar or greater in length to the submission that was received by the third party.”  Well, that really impressed us, since our submission was 20 pages long and had 21 recommendations. So we asked him to table the responses, which he wouldn’t do, claiming that those who made the submissions did so with the expectation of confidentiality (Pro Tip: When the Office of the Third Party undertakes consultations we inform people in advance that their comments may be made public, and offer them the option to request confidentiality.)

You can probably guess what comes next.  We FOIPPed the submissions, we waited 30 days, we were told that third-party consultations were underway, we waited an additional 30 days, and we received the documents. Imagine our disappointment to discover that in reality none of the submissions “were similar or greater in length” than ours.  The closest was an eight page document that was entirely redacted under sec. 25(1) of the FOIPP Act, so I can’t tell you who it was from or what it was about.

As one of those who make a written submission with my comments about the modernizing of the FOIPP Act, I saw this process from the other side of the mountain; as I outlined here, on June 20, 2018 I received the “third party consultation letter,” to which I replied:

I have no objection to my submission being released.

It is already public and online at:

https://ruk.ca/content/modernize-freedom-information-and-protection-privacy-act

At the time I didn’t know that it was the Green Party that had submitted the FOIPP request; Mr. Bevan-Baker’s blog post closes the loop on this.

I think his suggestion, supported by Green Party practice, of including a “public by default; let us know if you need confidentiality” check for public consultations is a good one. While there are occasionally perfectly valid reasons for requesting to remain anonymous when making contributions to public policy, debate thrives best when it’s in the open, and this should be our default position.

After having 500 copies of the Charlottetown Boulder Park brochure printed, I needed places to put them.

I left about 50 with the office of the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly for placement inside the Hon. George Coles Building.

Which left me with needing a place for the remaining 450.

The food trucks surrounding the park were a logical place for some of them, but, as you can imagine, food trucks are already chock full of people, food, and supplies, and the last thing they need is something else squeezed in.

So I took matters into my own hands, and ordered a 3-pack of plexiglass outdoor tri-fold brochure holders with a lid from Amazon.ca (exorbitant at $52 plus $20 shipping, but those were cheap compared to what else I found), and they arrived today, and I installed them on electric poles beside the food trucks, ideally located where patrons waiting for their orders can improve their geological knowledge.

Please pick one up the next time you’re waiting for your burger, or your rolled ice cream, or that you’re looking for a shady spot to while away the hours.