OOO! I Forgot To Tell You How It Ended!!!

Before you read this post, you have to read this one.

I'll wait for you to get back.

Take your time.

Ok. Done?

Well here's how it ended.

I left off with me sitting in the Continental Airlines President's Club room.

Time out: By the way. Continental Airlines was one big mess on Thursday. From the stories I heard over the weekend, they weren't much better on Friday. Example A. Shape up, Continental.

Time in: Anyway, my flight was scheduled to leave Houston for San Antonio at 9:20 pm. Remember, I landed at 3:45 pm. I was OVER being in the airport. Alone. Over it.

I got to my gate about 8:45. You know, making sure I was not IN ANY WAY even close to missing this flight. Then I noticed that the flight had been delayed till 10:15. People waiting were cranky, let me tell you. Most of us had been waiting all day for delayed flights, missed flights, cancelled flights...and this one was the last one of the day. So you can imagine the tension in the room.

There were also several small children on the flight. Who were tired and hungry and bored, thus leading to crying and wailing and screaming and whining. I actually saw a man bang his head against a wall. And I'm not even kidding.

It was NOT PRETTY.

Finally, they let us on the plane at 10:05. The plane was packed. People were tired. Not everyone smelled, um...fresh, because we had been sitting in airports all the live long day! We all sat down, buckled our seatbelts, settled in for our 35 minute flight, and a flight attendant came on the speaker.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Thank you for flying Continental Airlines. At this time, we will be experiencing a slight delay as our pilots are on another flight and haven't landed yet."

No, no. Wait. It gets better.

"Also, we will be unable to turn on the air conditioner because the switch is located in the cockpit, and as we just said, we have no pilots to turn it on."

I can't make this stuff up. It was unreal. UNREAL, y'all.

So here we sit. Tired. Hot. Smelly. And for some unexplained reason, they decided to strap us all in our seats so we could breathe that stale, contaminated, shared air that I'm sure will give me some sort of illness in the near future. I seriously thought the Hispanic man behind me was going to storm the cockpit and find the air conditioner switch. I mean, come on. How hard could it be? Flying the plane = hard. I get that. Turning on the air conditioner = apparently, pretty dang hard, too.

Really?

And don't forget that it's August. And Texas. Nuff said.

At 11:00, the pilots arrive. The flight attendant announced enthusiastically, "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Pilots are HERE!" *chirp, chirp* Silence. Nothing. I think she expected us to applaud. We were WAY over that.

We finally take off at about 11:15.

I land in SA and find my friend, Erin, who has played a Guiness Book of World Record qualifying number of Word Jumbles that her mom kept giving her via phone from days and days of Jacksonville, FL newspapers. I find my bags, a taxi, and we head to the Marriott Rivercenter. At 12:30 AM. We order a room service omelette, marvel at the teeny bottle of Tabasco that came with it, and we crash. At 2:00 am.

Yeah, it wasn't the best day I've had in a while. But it did make for some good bloggy material. You know, because I'm a "glass is half full" kind of gal.