When last we'd left off, our intrepid protagonist had just arrived at
the big Houston airport and faced her biggest challenge, more terrifying
than earthquakes and wild bears, or even being attacked by a wild bear
during an earthquake: having to kill four hours at the Houston airport.
My original plan had been to follow last year's model, and that was to find the little joint I had breakfast at. Sure enough, I found it. The lights were on, there were people there getting ready. The "Hostess Will Seat You" sign was up and the menu boards were out front. So I stood by the entrance, and eventually the waitress saw me waiting. At 5:56 a.m. local time, this actual conversation took place:
Waitress: "We're closed now, ma'am."
Nerd Girl: "Okay. What time do you open?"
Waitress: "Six."
Nerd Girl: "Okay, thank you."
(Nerd Girl's internal voice: "Screw that!")
Instead I went to a Starbucks booth for some juice and a muffin, parked it in an empty seat at a vacant gate, and tried to rest for a bit. This, of course, was hard to do. As the airport started to awaken, it became harder to find a quiet place to sit and wait. The corridors were already starting to become congested, and if that wasn't enough, you risked getting run down by those electric shuttle carts, which sometimes run two-abreast down the corridors and are driven in a way that would send veteran New York cabbies screaming in fright.
The best prospect for quiet space was down a corridor to some empty gates. Nothing was open, no planes were in, and it was quiet except for those infernal television monitors tuned to the morning news drip. I tried to block them out as best I could. To the east, I could see the sun start to peek out over the clouds; it was a beautiful sunrise, with the Texas sky all orange and everything. A 767-200 got towed over to the nearest gate, and workers started fussing over it.
At least Concourse B has the Shipley Do-Nuts stand, and the Liz Lemon in me had been waiting for this the whole trip. So I treated myself to one plain glazed and one white cream, all of $1.60. Then I had to find a place to sit and enjoy them. This was easier said than done. My search led me down one of those long corridors, to a vacant row of seats. There's no windows, and you're right up against the flow of traffic, but it's by yourself, at least.
Unfortunately, a string of events started to unfold. The first was that as I traveled the corridor, I happened to be right behind someone with serious, serious personal hygiene issues. I'll spare you the details, but the effect of this wake turbulence on my olfactory nerves would have been enough in itself to ruin the experience.
Then, right as I took my first couple bites of the creme-filled doughnut, the bag on my lap started to shift. It fell to the floor. The other of my prized doughnuts lay face-down on filthy carpet.
In sorrow and disgust, I put both doughnuts back in the bag, crumpled it up, deposited the bag in a trash can...and went right back for another two doughnuts. (A real financial tragedy at another $1.60.) And I found someplace else to sit. Not much better, but at least it wasn't in that lousy corridor.
Things didn't seem much more promising, and I still had time to kill and hadn't had a decent breakfast. I wasn't going to get to have a proper lunch, either, so it was probably a good idea to get something. I remembered there was a little Chili's in the middle of the terminal. Since I'm not (yet) under the Pam Halpert lifetime ban from Chili's, I figured it would be a good place to chill for a bit, so I went there and had the breakfast tacos. Unfortunately, this wasn't much of an improvement. The man sitting behind me was having a loud conversation on his cell phone. And the television monitor was showing the Today Show's cooking segment, in which a poor, innocent, probably very tasty piece of salmon was being massacred in the name of haute cuisine. Considering what I'd enjoyed a couple nights before, it seemed like a crime.
And then I looked up at the monitor again. It had suddenly been flipped to Headline News. That's when I learned Steinbrenner had passed away.
I settled up and still had about an hour and a half to go before my flight boarded. I went on down to where my gate was, hoping I could find a place to sit for a while. Unfortunately, my flight was leaving from Gate 84. Only if you've traveled out of Gate 84 can you appreciate what kind of practical joke that is. For, you see, Gate 84 is actually made up of about 15 or so additional gates, designated with letters. For all intents and purposes, Gate 84 is a bus terminal. There must have been 200 or 300 people milling around waiting inside this big box of a room, with nothing to do and nowhere to sit where you're not dealing with humanity. You look down the steps at what you're getting into, and it's like that hospital scene in Gone With The Wind, of the endless, endless rows of the wounded and dying.
I finally gave up and parked it in a reasonably calm corner, trying to finish up a crossword puzzle. But, sure enough, someone sitting a row over proceeded to have a series of VERY LOUD cell phone conversations. I gave up, hauled out my Bose headset and my iPod, and listened to some things, trying the best I could to shut everything out.
The glorious call finally came for my flight home, and as boarding progressed, my spirits rose. I was two people away from having my boarding pass scanned when the call came to the gate agent over the walkie-talkie: "Don't board this flight." She informed them, "I've already sent them." Apparently, a prior crew had done some NA$CAR-style victory burnouts after a particularly good flight, and our assigned aircraft had a flat tire. (I don't know if it was just flat-spotted or if it really was flat; I couldn't see from the bus terminal, so all I know is what the gate agent said.) So we were ordered to take a seat and the other passengers were ordered back into the waiting area.
About 30 minutes later, the glorious call came and we could bound aboard. This is when I learned just how elaborate the practical joke of Gate 84 is: you walk down this long, long pre-fab sheetmetal structure, hang a left, and walk down more structure until you reach your assigned doorway to walk across the ramp to the aircraft. By the time you get there, you feel like you've walked halfway to your destination.
There weren't a lot of people on this flight, and one or two passengers decided to take other seats, which was fine by our flight attendant (though, for obvious weight and balance and paperwork issues, all this had to be settled before we left the gate). And when we finally pushed, it was not a moment too soon. Getting sprung from B Concourse always makes me feel like I'm out of prison.
The flight home from Houston was uneventful and pleasant. I had time to do some thinking about some things, and it all went well. Before much longer, the landscapes below turned familiar, and soon we were over the familiar downtown I know so well from all my years living around here. A few more miles of flying, and we were back home. Even before I got off the plane, I braced myself for the brutal heat and cloying humidity that awaited. Yep, there it was, and not even the high-speed air conditioning blowers in the jetway could shut it out. If nothing else made me want to be back in Alaska, that did.
I had no baggage to claim, and nothing else to do, so I pre-paid my parking (thankfully, without the same troubles we faced in Anchorage), went out to the parking lot and reclaimed Baby, and I was off for home. I stopped at the supermarket on the way home to get something special for dinner and then drove on back to the house.
It was over. But just for now.
My original plan had been to follow last year's model, and that was to find the little joint I had breakfast at. Sure enough, I found it. The lights were on, there were people there getting ready. The "Hostess Will Seat You" sign was up and the menu boards were out front. So I stood by the entrance, and eventually the waitress saw me waiting. At 5:56 a.m. local time, this actual conversation took place:
Waitress: "We're closed now, ma'am."
Nerd Girl: "Okay. What time do you open?"
Waitress: "Six."
Nerd Girl: "Okay, thank you."
(Nerd Girl's internal voice: "Screw that!")
Instead I went to a Starbucks booth for some juice and a muffin, parked it in an empty seat at a vacant gate, and tried to rest for a bit. This, of course, was hard to do. As the airport started to awaken, it became harder to find a quiet place to sit and wait. The corridors were already starting to become congested, and if that wasn't enough, you risked getting run down by those electric shuttle carts, which sometimes run two-abreast down the corridors and are driven in a way that would send veteran New York cabbies screaming in fright.
The best prospect for quiet space was down a corridor to some empty gates. Nothing was open, no planes were in, and it was quiet except for those infernal television monitors tuned to the morning news drip. I tried to block them out as best I could. To the east, I could see the sun start to peek out over the clouds; it was a beautiful sunrise, with the Texas sky all orange and everything. A 767-200 got towed over to the nearest gate, and workers started fussing over it.
After a while I shifted to the other side of the concourse, where there was less glare and a little more room to spread out. I finished up some paperwork and did some crossword puzzles. While I was sitting there alone, a white-haired gentleman in a uniform shirt and slacks came over to me. For a second I thought he was going to ask me to leave. But he greeted me, told me his name, and said very kindly, "I want to thank you for flying Continental. I hope you're having a pleasant trip." I wasn't prepared for this, and for a second I was speechless. But I thanked him and told him I had really enjoyed it. In all the years I've been traveling, I've never had anyone go out of their way to thank me like that, not even when I was a loyal and frequent customer of a certain airline whose once-renowned hospitality was excised during a series of corporate moves over the last decade.
A little while later, this area of the concourse started to get a little too noisy. A Newark flight came in, and there was the usual arrival commotion. Then a couple of flight attendants got into a very lively conversation nearby. I couldn't work or relax. I figured it was time to cut my losses and do the inevitable, and catch the train to the dreaded B Concourse.
Concourse B is the part of the airport that handles the bulk of regional airliner traffic at Houston. The good news is, it's scheduled to be seriously renovated before too much longer. But future plans can't help the present-day traveler, who must contend with the fact that B is much too small for all the flights. Not only have there been gates added to gates (more on that in a moment), but the facility is just too small. To get to the gates, you travel these long corridors; they seem like a quarter-mile or more. At the end are cramped little waiting areas that serve seven or eight gates. It's not a place for the claustrophobic or agoraphobic.At least Concourse B has the Shipley Do-Nuts stand, and the Liz Lemon in me had been waiting for this the whole trip. So I treated myself to one plain glazed and one white cream, all of $1.60. Then I had to find a place to sit and enjoy them. This was easier said than done. My search led me down one of those long corridors, to a vacant row of seats. There's no windows, and you're right up against the flow of traffic, but it's by yourself, at least.
Unfortunately, a string of events started to unfold. The first was that as I traveled the corridor, I happened to be right behind someone with serious, serious personal hygiene issues. I'll spare you the details, but the effect of this wake turbulence on my olfactory nerves would have been enough in itself to ruin the experience.
Then, right as I took my first couple bites of the creme-filled doughnut, the bag on my lap started to shift. It fell to the floor. The other of my prized doughnuts lay face-down on filthy carpet.
In sorrow and disgust, I put both doughnuts back in the bag, crumpled it up, deposited the bag in a trash can...and went right back for another two doughnuts. (A real financial tragedy at another $1.60.) And I found someplace else to sit. Not much better, but at least it wasn't in that lousy corridor.
Things didn't seem much more promising, and I still had time to kill and hadn't had a decent breakfast. I wasn't going to get to have a proper lunch, either, so it was probably a good idea to get something. I remembered there was a little Chili's in the middle of the terminal. Since I'm not (yet) under the Pam Halpert lifetime ban from Chili's, I figured it would be a good place to chill for a bit, so I went there and had the breakfast tacos. Unfortunately, this wasn't much of an improvement. The man sitting behind me was having a loud conversation on his cell phone. And the television monitor was showing the Today Show's cooking segment, in which a poor, innocent, probably very tasty piece of salmon was being massacred in the name of haute cuisine. Considering what I'd enjoyed a couple nights before, it seemed like a crime.
And then I looked up at the monitor again. It had suddenly been flipped to Headline News. That's when I learned Steinbrenner had passed away.
I settled up and still had about an hour and a half to go before my flight boarded. I went on down to where my gate was, hoping I could find a place to sit for a while. Unfortunately, my flight was leaving from Gate 84. Only if you've traveled out of Gate 84 can you appreciate what kind of practical joke that is. For, you see, Gate 84 is actually made up of about 15 or so additional gates, designated with letters. For all intents and purposes, Gate 84 is a bus terminal. There must have been 200 or 300 people milling around waiting inside this big box of a room, with nothing to do and nowhere to sit where you're not dealing with humanity. You look down the steps at what you're getting into, and it's like that hospital scene in Gone With The Wind, of the endless, endless rows of the wounded and dying.
I finally gave up and parked it in a reasonably calm corner, trying to finish up a crossword puzzle. But, sure enough, someone sitting a row over proceeded to have a series of VERY LOUD cell phone conversations. I gave up, hauled out my Bose headset and my iPod, and listened to some things, trying the best I could to shut everything out.
The glorious call finally came for my flight home, and as boarding progressed, my spirits rose. I was two people away from having my boarding pass scanned when the call came to the gate agent over the walkie-talkie: "Don't board this flight." She informed them, "I've already sent them." Apparently, a prior crew had done some NA$CAR-style victory burnouts after a particularly good flight, and our assigned aircraft had a flat tire. (I don't know if it was just flat-spotted or if it really was flat; I couldn't see from the bus terminal, so all I know is what the gate agent said.) So we were ordered to take a seat and the other passengers were ordered back into the waiting area.
About 30 minutes later, the glorious call came and we could bound aboard. This is when I learned just how elaborate the practical joke of Gate 84 is: you walk down this long, long pre-fab sheetmetal structure, hang a left, and walk down more structure until you reach your assigned doorway to walk across the ramp to the aircraft. By the time you get there, you feel like you've walked halfway to your destination.
There weren't a lot of people on this flight, and one or two passengers decided to take other seats, which was fine by our flight attendant (though, for obvious weight and balance and paperwork issues, all this had to be settled before we left the gate). And when we finally pushed, it was not a moment too soon. Getting sprung from B Concourse always makes me feel like I'm out of prison.
The flight home from Houston was uneventful and pleasant. I had time to do some thinking about some things, and it all went well. Before much longer, the landscapes below turned familiar, and soon we were over the familiar downtown I know so well from all my years living around here. A few more miles of flying, and we were back home. Even before I got off the plane, I braced myself for the brutal heat and cloying humidity that awaited. Yep, there it was, and not even the high-speed air conditioning blowers in the jetway could shut it out. If nothing else made me want to be back in Alaska, that did.
I had no baggage to claim, and nothing else to do, so I pre-paid my parking (thankfully, without the same troubles we faced in Anchorage), went out to the parking lot and reclaimed Baby, and I was off for home. I stopped at the supermarket on the way home to get something special for dinner and then drove on back to the house.
It was over. But just for now.
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