Shortest Commercial Flight Ever

My recent business trip to Nanaimo, British Columbia meant that I took one of the shortest commercial flights in North America. The 12-minute flight between Vancouver (YVR) and Nanaimo's (YCD) tiny airport is undertaken about a half-dozen times daily by an Air Canada Jazz DH-8 shown below.

In terms of distance, it's just 30 miles between the two airports, which are separated by the Strait of Georgia. I could have taken a 2-hour ferry across the strait, but the quick flight was my preferred method of getting from Vancouver to Vancouver Island.

Rollover accident on I-95

Kate and I had a good but abbreviated visit with our brothers in the DC area. While a flight cancellation and travel delays meant that I arrived at BWI about 9 hours (!) behind schedule, we made the most of the weekend.

We visited the International Spy Museum in downtown DC. I had been in DC the day that it opened in 2002, but the line was around the block. It only took 5 years for me to get back there to enjoy the experience. In addition to the normal museum tour, we bought tickets for the "Operation Spy" experience. Kate and I both enjoyed the entire museum, but were very hungry by the time we got towards the end of the tour. We gave only a cursory look at the last three portions of the exhibit in order to get through it and get to lunch.

We had dinner with my brother and sister-in-law at Lia's in Bethesda. The food was enjoyable and the service was great. We started with "Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Smoked Duck," which was delicious. For the main dish, I got the "Day Boat Scallops," which were served with an autumn "ratatouille", pumpkin seed pesto, and crispy prosciutto. Kate had the "Saffron Fettuccine with Shellfish Stew," which she said was yummy, though she was disappointed that in the description: "mussels, clams, jumbo shrimp, roasted tomato broth" the word shrimp was singular.

We finally hit the road to head back to Philly after 10pm. About 20 minutes into the trip we decided to pull off I-95 to get some fuel. We hopped off at Rt-198 in South Laurel, MD. After a quick refill we were back on the road. Unfortunately, there was a severe accident on the on-ramp to I-95 north that had just happened a few moments before. It looked like a car had lost control and rolled over onto the median between the on-ramp and the interstate. We were the third car to come down the on-ramp after the accident and were immediately stopped in our tracks by a state trooper putting down flares across the road.


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While I wanted to help with patient care as an EMT, we were was in Maryland and I didn't feel comfortable offering my services. There were already three ambulances on scene, and it seemed like they had everything under control. So instead I used my fancy new digital camera with image stabilization to capture some shots of the accident scene. I was impressed with the level of detail that the Canon SD850 was able to record in the low light.

In the end, they brought in two State Police medical helicopters that landed on the highway. I couldn't tell how many patients they transported. Ambulances from Montgomery, Prince George, and Howard County were on scene.

After waiting for about 45 minutes, the state police finally started having people turn around the on-ramp and drive the wrong way up the on-ramp to return to Rt-198. It felt strange to be driving with the yellow line on the right side of the single-lane ramp when it's supposed to be on the left. In the end, the accident delayed us about an hour.