Category: Orphans

UPDATE: 2:39 p.m. Still heading to El Paso. FlightAware, a flight tracking site, currently shows our flight to be over the edge of New Mexico flying 390 knots at 34,000 feet. It’s great to know where you are when you’re flying. That’s why I like the fact that AAL has allowed some kind of Internet. Sounds like the plane is slowing down, so the Internet soon will be gone. It stops 14 minutes before landing. So adios!

American Airlines has in-flight WiFi. It’s about ten bucks for one flight. I thought I’d try it once to say I blogged from the air. So, here we are EFD airborne and tying in turbulence already.

Flying from Houston to El Paso by way of Dallas doesn’t seem the ideal route anyway. It’s like the intro to the live version of Waylon Jennings’ “Bob Wills is still the King” when Waylon said he “wrote  this song on plane between Dallas and Austin, going to El Paso.” Well weather sometimes tends to get in the way of flying the way it did yesterday.

So I spent the night in Humble, just north of the Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. The hotel is called “Econo Lodge” but I like to refer to it by its more proper name “Motel Hell.”

My flight was canceled so I got one of these voucher things from the airline. They were supposed to give me a choice of place but they didn’t. I should have known I was in for an adventure (a bad one at that) when I saw the driver of the van that came to get us at the airport, came around the desk and opened up the motel office. It was kind of like one of those scenes from “Green Acres” where Sam Drucker was the postmaster, justice of the peace, owned the general store, etc. Except in this case Sam was  from Pakindia or Indiastan.

Sam got me a key to a room, which I took, then after finding the room,  put the card in the slot. The door opened only partly as the bar at the top where a chain used to be stopped it from opening all the way. As the door partially opened, I heard a woman began to scream. It was occupied.

Things just went downhill from there. It seemed like either nothing worked or it was broken or it wasn’t available at the Econo Lodge.

The only bright spot of my night was getting stuck in a rain and lightning storm about a quarter mile from my motel room and a lady in the store had her employee take me back to the hotel. After getting out, I tried to pay the man, but he wouldn’t take my money.

Among the bad, is the good. Still an hour and half before my plane leaves for EP. I am past ready to be there.

It is a travel day. IAH to ELP via DFW. That’s Bush Intercontinental to El Paso via Dallas-Fort Worth for those familiar with airport lingo. The acronyms do cut down on a few words and can be important at times.

The via is due to my carrier being American Airlines. DFW is a AAL hub. I would much rather had taken the direct route from Houston to El Paso but when you get bargain prices with Priceline, you get the airline and the times they have available for a ticket. And, according to Priceline, I saved about $230. I could have spent about the same with Southwest and have myself a direct route from HOU to ELP (Houston Hobby) as well as my preferred times. But the only flight I took with Southwest felt like being shoved into a cattle car. Others I know don’t feel that way, but to each his or her own I suppose.

Let’s see what kind of weirdos we can see today at the airport. Fun, right? Yeah, fun, fun, fun to travel. At least that’s what I am trying to tell myself. Until later.

UPDATE: My friend Paul of Toyko, who is not exactly like Andy of Mayberry, struck me with a Clintonian:  “Doesn’t it depend on what you mean by the word “is?” This made me realize that I omitted a word in the first paragraph. Guess which word it was? No you are wrong. No you are wrong too. One more chance. Oh, no you are so wrong that you should be elected to the “So Wrong Hall of Fame.” Actually it is: “not.”

An editor on a freelance assignment told me that she did not permit the use of “is” and “was” in sentences. It was a little quirk, she explained, not using “is” as I remember. You think? But I do think of that as I have amassed my bags to begin packing for a trip.

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I am heading off tomorrow to El Paso. As in, “out in the West Texas town of El lPaso … ” Marty Robbins was certainly ahead of his time. I am sure somewhere on my blog — I’ve been writing this thing for five years now on almost every weekday so I don’t know what all is on here. I have to search like everyone else — I tell the story that as a heartbroken youngster I didn’t get to see Marty Robbins as intended and instead saw some guy dressed up in a suit and cowboy hat named Willie Nelson.

So, I have to pack. And since it’s been more than six months since I’ve flown, I checked the TSA site to see what the prohibited item du jour might be. I didn’t see anything new. I really can’t pack everything until the morning, so I thought I’d just pack what I could. Sometimes I can be pretty organized, even anal. Of course, some people whose lives I have crossed certainly  think of me more as anal than anything, more like an a**hole.

Seriously, I suppose some good hints are listed on TSA’s site. They kind of lose me in their “checkpoint friendly” laptop procedures. It appears some bags are okay in that they present a good image through X-ray of the computer and the laptop does not have to be removed from the bag. But the explanation just isn’t clear enough. Bags in the “trifold,” “butterfly” and “sleeve” styles are okay, but warns the TSA:

Purchasing one of these bags will not guarantee that you can leave your laptop in your bag for screening. If a Transportation Security Officer finds that the bag does not present a clear and distinct image of the laptop separate from the rest of the bag, the laptop must be screened separately.”

I have a sleeve bag for my computer, but I use it as a buffer in what is otherwise a flimsy canvas-style computer bag. It does have a lot of pockets, however, and I am a fool for pockets. Really, I feel the TSA wasting my time on an explanation about bags that might still require the standard screening is not a whole lot of use. Please let me board!

Tomorrow, I will still take out my computer and the battery, unless they tell me not. It’s like a giant, government-sanctioned, game of “Simon Says.”

“Simon says don’t take out your computer. Take out your power cord. Nope. Simon didn’t say take out your power cord … ” And so it goes. Please let me board!

While just about finishing a freelance piece my electricity went “kaplut.” I say kaplut because just saying it went off doesn’t add any color. Of course, when your lights go out and you are in the dark, that doesn’t add any color either.

The problem is this wreck sometime around 1 p.m. today near Dunkin Donuts on Eleventh Street near Harrison Avenue and Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital, to the right. One wild-looking but friendly guy with dreadlocks and a “holy” shirt passed me by on a bicycle. Now, I would never use just one person as a source except I was not going to go down there to the wreck because I am not working for a news organization. But here’s what Rasta Man Vibrations told me.

He said a car hit a power pole causing the lines to go around and around and around. Supposedly, someone was hit by an electric line and was taken to the hospital. That’s all I know. That is except, of course, my power is out and I have to finish my freelance article because tomorrow I have to get ready to fly to El Paso the next day. That will be from Houston and in a plane, or so I hope. Probably not like the guy on the bicycle was motoring. However that was.