So I was in Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving (which went well, thank you). I live in Silicon Valley. So yesterday I had a flight from Pittsburgh to Houston, and then a flight from Houston to San Jose. I got to the airport, got my tickets, and for some weird reason (a computer glitch or an overfull coach section or something), I randomly got a first class seat from Houston to San Jose. Woo-hoo! How exciting. So the flight from Pittsburgh to Houston is a half hour late or something, nothing ridiculous. I make my way through the very very large Houston airport, and the flight to San Jose has already left. Damn it! There goes my first class seat!
But that’s not all. This is the busiest travel weekend of the year. There are no more flights to San Jose. So I go standby to San Francisco. No dice. I go standby to Oakland. No dice. So as of right now, I’m typing away from the lovely Hampton Inn where I spent the night last night, and where I’ll spend the night tonight, before I finally get on a plane to San Jose tomorrow morning. In theory. (Every single flight to the bay area today was already oversold, except the 8:25 p.m. flight to Sacramento, which really wouldn’t help much.)
Whether my suitcase will also be accompanying me is anyone’s guess. And yes, I ended up here without a change of clothes, although a quick stroll down the street found me a dollar store at which I bought socks, and a gas station at which I bought hideously ugly Texas souvenir T-shirts.
On the plus side:
-I’m a very short walk from a strip club, an establishment that I strongly suspect is a brothel, and another establishment called something like “Unique Specialities - Adult Day Care” which I’m quite curious about
-I got to see a very interesting show about the porn industry on HBO last night
-I had such a nice time over Thanksgiving (and visiting my secret doper girlfriend before that) that I’ve managed to maintain my cool about the whole situation, for the most part
Drop me an email with the specific names and I’ll give you the scoop on those places. Or you could be boring and check out Borders to see if any of the local Magic players are hanging out.
Well, if yer looking for porn and strippers, Houston’s a good town to be standed in.
I’ll go ahead and hijack your thread to vent about my Thanksgiving travel woes. Scheduled to fly out of Austin last Wed. Remember the weather last week in Texas? Massive flooding and storms. So I’m already apprehensive. Flight out of Austin an hour delayed. No biggie and expected because we had hail that morning. As we take off, thunder storms hit Austin (which look really cool from a plane, BTW) and accompany us to Dallas.
Dallas: Third busiest airport in the country, the day before the busiest travel day of the year and every single flight is delayed so you have tons of people camping out of the floor and desperately trying to sprint to the new gate their flights been moved to. Plus, they’re remodling the airport so there’s lots of exposed bare concrete - very third world. The thunder storms have delayed flights even more in Dallas so it means I spend three and a half hours in the airport.
Filnally get on the flight and we have to fly through all the incredibly heinous thunderstorms that just blew through Dallas. Plus my flight had been changed and I was rebooked in the next to last row with the engine just outside my window and small children behind me. The turbulence was so bad the captain wouldn’t let the flight attendents unstrap. Everyone on the plane clutches their motion sickness bag. And me? I wind up freakin’ utilizing my bag as the sweet TCU boy next to me pats me knee sympathetically. :o All I can see is the red flashing beacon illuminating the underside of the wing, confirming my suspicion that I was trapped in hell.
Finally made it into Florida at 2 am and then had a two hour drive to my home town. But at least I was off that freakin’ plane…
