Planet Houston

Posted on May 24, 2011 in Travel - Conferences

What is your travel horror story?

The shriek of jet engines can barely be heard inside the pressurized cabins of jet liners. My shrieks of frustration could not be heard beyond the door of my hotel room following the day that I had on Thursday, when I shifted my presence from California to Texas. The day’s irritations began innocuously enough with a snaking line at the Continental Airlines check-in counter where three of the five machines were down. This didn’t keep the system from running slowly: the same bad processing speed that airline computer networks are famous for continued to lugubriously serve customers. Once I had my ticket, I tacked myself to the tail of another human snake at Airport Security. All went well and I hardly noticed that I lost my boarding pass. A kind [[TSA]] agent found it for me, which served me well when I took myself to the gate which was printed on the pass. Here I waited for the efficient airport staff to announce about two minutes before boarding that there had been a widely disseminated misprint on the passes and that the One True Gate for the outgoing Houston flight was two stalls away.

I vacated my chair under the gaze of watchful passengers bound for another Continental destination and successfully climbed on board the plane. United/Continental felt that each little item deserved a charge (though they did pass out free earbuds), so I was obliged to pay for television service and, if I wanted it, a meal. A can of ginger ale that wasn’t (When is Ginger Ale not Ginger Ale? When it is Seagram’s! ((Look at the label. It has no ginger in it, just lemon and lime.)) ) caused me to barf 157 miles outside of George Bush International, which led adjacent passengers to hold their noses and offer me [[Tic Tacs]]. Everyone graciously gave me room as I exited and wove through a lengthy labyrinth that after many corridors, a few stairs, and a bleary-eyed guard brought me to baggage claim where I stupidly watched my own bag go round the carousel a half dozen times before I recognized it.

Lynn, I decided, should be informed that I had arrived. I tried texting her. When a mysterious error code flashed across the screen three times in response to three attempts, I decided to use my own voice to convey the message.

Verizon declined to grant me an audience with her unless I called her collect. In front of the Super Shuttle booth, I despaired but a nice agent loaned me her phone. I almost walked off with it. Lynn did not answer. I left a message to inform her that I had lost nationwide calling privileges and promised to call again from the hotel. Ah, I thought, I would have this matter cleared in under an hour. Super Shuttle ((Though this next episode sounds horrendous, I want to say that I like Super Shuttle. They are an economic boon when needing to get to and from a distant airport.)) would take me straight to the hotel.

The ride took an hour and ten minutes. First, the other passengers were spread out throughout Houston and its suburbs. Then we had a driver who decided to ignore her GPS directions and drop off other passengers before me. My whimpers that I was exhausted elicited no pity. When one young woman whined that she didn’t want to wait for the shuttle to take her home, but wanted instead to be dropped off at her mother’s office which was “right there”, the driver obliged. The white office tower proved to be five blocks from the avenue we were on. The whiner got out, showing her appreciation for the gesture by swearing that she would never use the service again. We needed to find a place to turn around in the office’s parking lot, then turn onto the street going in the same direction as that which we approached the office building, make a U-Turn two blocks down, and then backtrack to the same street that we had departed from to rid ourselves of the complainer.

Ah, the hotel did come (I was scheduled to be the second, but I was the last out) and I did get out, half-dreading that I would find that the hotel had lost my reservations. They did have them and they sent me up to the 16th floor where I frantically tried to call Lynn. When I failed to reach her after four tries, I attempted to get the number of her office using directory assistance. The electronic service did not recognize my pronunciation of its name and would not let me talk to a human being through I begged for this last option. “It’s not your fault,” said the automatic switchboard. “It’s me.” “And that doesn’t help!” I cried, but still there was no getting to a human being.

My exhaustion had blinded me to the obvious solution, which was to set up my laptop and call her. This brought its own nightmares which culminated in my summoning the hotel engineer who fixed the difficulty by refreshing my screen. I lost my room key in the room and asked the engineer to send me up a new one. He forgot but I found it and called him to let him know that it was okay if he kept forgetting. Lynn called just as I finished an email describing my predicament. The cell phone urgency could be dismissed. Verizon had neglected to switch on automatic billing. She had arranged a fix.

My followers on [[Dailybooth]] heard most of this in a note that ended:

after only five hours of sleep, I am blasted from the face of the earth. I take a nap and wake up feeling hungover.

When I fetched my information so that I could change my reservation so that I arrived at IAH an hour earlier, I cut my finger on the zipper. And that was Thursday….

Once I passed through the hotel doors, I did not go outside for three days. The Westin Galleria affixed itself to a cruciform known as the Galleria mall. I ate there, exercised there, and, of course, attended the conference across the hallway from the main hotel. My return came on Sunday. Super Shuttle made only one stop after it picked me up, then went straight to the airport.

This time I faced eight check-in stations, only two of which were out of order. Clueless customers stood in front of some and passengers with strange baggage — cardboard boxes labeled “Saigon egg rolls” and a skinny blond bearing a large Thule crate — occupied the rest. My halting advance through the line took twenty five minutes.

I finished my check-in in less than a minute, then waited for an agent to tag and take my bag for two more.

The airport security line was longer, but it moved steadily. The guy in front of me mislaid his belt. I gave it to an airport security guard who identified himself as the “safety” officer. My act of patriotic charity decided him in favor of making me go through the full body scan, behind a woman with a broken leg. I placed my feet on the white footprints, raised my hands over my head, watched the camera swing in front of me, and then left the glass cabinet. All was done with in less than a minute.

The gate number was right this time. I read while I waited, then got on the plane when my row was called. I swallowed two pills of [[Dramamine]] as I boarded. The woman and daughter sitting next to me had just come from London. When the pilot announced that they were having a little trouble with the onboard computer, the mother sighed. When he announced that the planes were being staggered so as to successfully navigate storms to the West, she groaned. An hour and five minutes after our departure time, we got our go-ahead. The plane slanted into the gray-pink sky and we were gone.