This, my longest blog post ever, is a long rant about traveling to and from Houston. If you don't want to read a long, tedious description of my traveling troubles, skip the next several paragraphs.
Well, I left on Saturday of last week to go look for a new house in Texas, since I'll be moving there some time in a month or so. So, we get to the airport with plenty of time to spare. There were no holdups, gate-changes, or delays. Now, if you know my family at all, you know that something always goes wrong when we're traveling anywhere by plane. Sometimes the gate changes and we have five minutes to sprint to the opposite end of the airport. Sometimes the plane doesn't land until long after it should have left, and it is delayed by several hours. Naturally, we're all wondering why nothing went wrong. I put it out of my mind and relaxed during the 4-hour flight to Houston, Texas.
At the 3 1/2 hour mark, the pilot announces that there is a massive storm right over the airport, and that no planes can land at the moment. We go into a holding pattern when we reach the airport after around a 4-hour flight, and circle above the airport for a while along with tons of other planes. (Houston is the hub for all domestic Continental Airlines flights, so there were loads of other planes waiting to land as well.)
After spending an hour in the holding pattern, the pilot comes on again and says that the plane is running low on gas. So, we cruise on over to Austin to land and refuel. It doesn't take long to get there, but it takes an hour for the fuel truck to get to us and finish filling up the tank (other planes were there before us). Then we waited in line to take off and flew back to Houston, where we were finally able to land since the storm had moved on. I ended up spending 6 or 7 hours on that plane. (I took a look at the Arrivals listing in Houston and saw that nearly EVERY Continental Airlines plane was running at least a half-hour late!)
Everything in Houston went well, and we found a good house, bought it at about 20,000 dollars below the asking price, and had pretty good weather for the most part. We get back to the Houston airport, and less than 10 minutes after we go inside, there is a full-blown storm going again. We check in, and our flight's still leaving on time, so we go up and wait by the gate. (We got there extremely early because we ran out of things to occupy us in Houston). After waiting for a while, we go look at the Departures listing and see that, once again, almost every incoming and outgoing flight is delayed. Ours was only delayed by 45 minutes at that point, though.
Every minute or two there's a new announcement about a gate change, delay, and/or cancellation of various flights. Ours ended up boarding about an hour behind schedule, rather than 45 minutes. Then we waited another half-hour for 9 people to arrive on their connecting flight and board the plane. Then we waited yet another half-hour in a long line of planes in order to take off on the runway. We gained about a half-hour in the air and arrived only an hour and a half late.
And that's my traveling fiasco.
On a lighter note, I found a used copy of .hack//Mutation in a GameStop in Houston, so now I have another game to play for a while! I also bought X-Men, New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart DS, and Metroid Prime Hunters for my DS last Friday, and Animal Crossing: Wild World while I was in Houston.
Wow, I really spent a lot since school got out, especially if you include my new DS Lite.
Anyway, until next time!
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