New York to Toronto in 20 easy steps

First of all...New York was fantastic...but I have to save it for next time.

Let me tell you about the most complicated way possible to get from La Guardia airport to Toronto.

Step 1: Have your 6:30pm flight cancelled and receive notification around 2:15pm while in line to start the NBC studio tour.

Step 2: Immediately call Air Canada to confirm cancellation (which they do) and try to reschedule yourself (and your two friends) to get home that day.

Step 3: Receive an alternate routing home with a 5:30 flight to Montreal and a 9:30 flight to Toronto arriving at 11:00pm. Feel kinda crappy about getting home so late when you were hoping to have time to unpack and relax but figure it'll be ok to be a bit tired for work on Monday. Proceed with your tour.

Step 4: Rush out to the airport for the 5:30 flight thereby missing your planned excursion to pick up cupcakes before heading out of town.

Step 5: Arrive at the airport to find that the 5:30 flight to Montreal has also been cancelled and join the line of people trying to figure out a way to get home.

Step 6: Get rescheduled on a 7:55 flight to Montreal which moves your connection to 11:00pm and gets you into Toronto at midnight. Be thankful that using the mobile Air Canada services and getting notification early means that you were fast on the draw to get rescheduled through Montreal in the first place, unlike many others in the line who are being handed lists of local hotels.

Step 7: Decide screw it, since you've now got another 3 hours before your flight you'll take a cab back into Manhattan and pick up your damn cupcakes...which are absolutely fantastically delicious.

Step 8: Have your 7:55 flight get delayed until 8:35

Step 9: Have the flight get delayed until 8:55 and start worrying about making your 11:00 connection

Step 10: Have the flight get delayed until 9:25 and realize that there's now a snowball's chance in hell that you're getting to Toronto that night.

Step 11: Arrive in Montreal at 11:15 looking for attendent who was supposed to be waiting to rebook connecting flights for people as per announcement made en route. Find no one in the Airport from Air Canada because they all took off at 11:00.

Step 12: Book it to the Hilton while on hold with Air Canada to confirm seats on the 7:00am flight to Toronto.

Step 13: Spend 45 minutes on hold

Step 14: Confirm 7:00am flights for all three of us

Step 15: Sleep for almost 4 hours

Step 16: Get to airport to check in for 7:00am flight. Can't use kiosk to check in, deal with confusion about reissuing ticket (which is already an old fashioned carbon handwritten paper) to fly out that morning.

Step 17: Stop to grab some food with your two poor pregnant friends who need to eat something.

Step 18: Get to the gate having everyone already boarded and the sign already changed for the next departure to Winnipeg and the gate agents saying that there is no one else on the flight to Toronto that's about to pull away from the gate. Then they look at our boarding passes and realize that they had just took us off the passenger list because they assumed we made the connection the night before. Thankfully make our way on to the plane.

Step 19: Arrive in Toronto...pick up luggage (which makes it with duty free booze thankfully intact since it had to get checked after we missed the connection)...grab cab to head straight to work to arrive 15 minutes late for your 8:30am Monday meeting.

Step 20: Try to figure out how long you need to put in at the office before you can go home and crawl into bed.