Oh, gosh, I almost forgot.

[camwyn]

The geek-fu is raging out of control. I brought the rental car back to Avis today at LAX (does the airport have an actual name, or is it just "Los Angeles International", or what? EVERYONE uses the three-letter code for it). I missed the first shuttle bus from Avis to the terminals because I was cleaning my stuff out of the car, so I had to scramble for the second. At the last moment I opted to shove my RCMP baseball cap into my backpack and wear my Aussie hat instead.

Which is probably good, because I was on a bus with a Mexican-accented driver, a New Yorker passenger... and four Francophone Quebecois who all asked to be delivered to the Air Canada terminal.

I'm going to wake up one of these mornings and I'll be inside a practical joke I saw on TV once, I just know it.

ME: Hmmm hmm hmmm, driving is fun... what's this, a roadblock?. . . noooo, it's . . . wait, Customs?
CUSTOMS OFFICIAL: Documents, s'il vous plait.
ME: o.O
CUSTOMS OFFICIAL: (bored tone) Mam'selle, apparently you have not had had your radio on this morning. They moved the border this morning. *hands over newspaper page, showing VERY strange map of North American continent*
ME: Whaaaa?
CUSTOMS OFFICIAL: Welcome to Canada, mam'selle.
ME: But I'm in New Jersey!
CUSTOMS OFFICIAL: Well, you were, but that was about two metres ago. Proof of citizenship, please?

Comments

[lwood.livejournal.com]

It really is the Los Angeles International Airport.

You can chart the history of the FAA's naming schemes over time, too. SFO is San Francisco, sure, but Dulles is stuck with IAD (International Airport Dulles), but that mates well with IAH (Houston).

And then you have left-field sports like EWR for Newark and ORD for O'Hare. 8-P

-- Lorrie

[kyrielle]

Or Portland, Oregon: PDX....

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

ORD for O'Hare

Yes, but O'Hare used to be Orchard Field.

What I want to know is how Toronto Pearson ended up with YYZ.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Okay, ORD makes sense.

Toronto got YYZ because at one point the fashion was to make all Canadian airports start with Y (gods know why). So, there's YYZ for Toronto. YYT for St John's, Newfoundland is clearly from the same litter. Later nomenclature still started with Y, but the latter two letters got to make sense: YVR for Vancouver, BC, YVA for Victoria, BC, et al.

YUL for Montréal though is just funny. Obviously, when it was always winter and never Christmas in Narnia, all the spare Christmasses wound up with the Quebecois...

-- Lorrie