Going to Texas

Set off Monday morning to go to the Worldcon in San Antonio.  I had a 10:05 flight so I worked it out that to get to check-in the obligatory 120 minutes before take-off I'd need to leave Guildford station on the 6:34 to Woking to get the 6:50 Rail-Air coach.  I set my alarm (well, two actually, just to be sure) for 5:15.

Of course, I was so worried about over-sleeping, I didn't sleep a wink but I got out of the house just after six to go to the station, just as it was getting light.  I was annoyed to discover that the ticket machines at Guildford station don't offer a senior railcard discount on tickets for the rail-air link.

As it happened, the coach got to the bus station in plenty of time and I checked in very quickly.  I even had time to find a café in the terminal where I could get bacon and eggs.  (I'd left home without breakfast.)

All went well until I got on the plane.  We left the gate on time and then the pilot came on the speakers to say we'd just had a circuit breaker go and we needed maintenance to fix it.  They parked us on the  tarmac somewhere whilst that happened.  We took off over an hour late.

I had to change planes at Charlotte in North Carolina and the previous time I'd done that was in 2006 for the Worldcon in Los Angeles.  That was just days after the clampdown on carrying liquids on planes and the security was so tight it took about two hours to get from the airport entrance to the departure gate.  The flight took off late, I missed the connection in Charlotte, got put on a later flight, and arrived at my hotel after midnight, having been travelling for 24 hours.

So I was following with interest the estimated time of arrival display that you could get on the screen at your seat.  Interestingly, although the scheduled arrival time was 14:10, the estimated time was only about 20 minutes later.  Lots of slack built into the schedule, I presume.

There was also a lot or turbulence on the crossing.  They suspended the lunch service for a while as it was too dangerous for the cabin crew to work in the aisles, and for the snack before landing they weren't serving hot drinks.

As it happened, we landed about 14:45 and my next flight was due at 16:14.  Seems like most of the passengers on my flight had connections, many earlier than mine.  Then, the next problem arose.  They were having trouble getting the baggage off the flight.  (People were speculating that the circuit breaker problem was connected with this.)  I finally got my bag, handed it in to the connections desk and dashed across the airport to the gate advertised for my next flight.  It was the other side of the airport, of course.  And the queue for security was long.  I got to the gate and was one of the last people to board, but still with about ten minutes to spare.

By now, I was pretty much out of it.  A blinding headache meant I had no enthusiasm for reading my book so I tried to sleep.  We seemed to land early at San Antonio (lots of rebuilding work going on in the airport) and although there seemed to be another delay for the bags to come out, there was no queue for taxis and I got to my hotel by six p.m. local time (midnight UK) which was about the time we were scheduled to land.

I checked in no trouble and got to my room.  Didn't even have the energy to watch some baseball so I got to sleep about 19:20 and slept for something like eleven hours.

First morning

When I left my hotel room this morning I was totally disorientated.  I had been in such a daze getting to the room last night, and the scene outside my door was such a maze of twisty passages all alike, I had no idea in which direction to go to get to the lift.

Seems like the only people I know who are here are all Swedes.  Met two at breakfast and two more when I set out to explore.

Actually, I made an earlier attempt to explore just after breakfast, but it was so early, nothing was open.

Reacquainted myself with the layout from when I was here back in 1997.  (Princess Diana died the last time I stayed here.)  Apparently it had been raining yesterday, a rare event here, and it was hot and humid walking around, and no sunshine.  Got to the Alamo, which is more or less next door, just through the shopping mall.  I'll maybe do the full tour later.

A bit too tired to do too much today.

A phone call

This afternoon, I was in a shopping mall when my phone rang.  I get so few calls on my mobile that at first I didn't realise it was my phone ringing even though the ring tone is the Buffy theme tune.  I fumbled in my bag for the phone and without my glasses on, I couldn't even remember which button to press to answer the it but even though I pressed one at random, it was the right one.

It was my bank.  My debit card had been used at an ATM in Texas and they wanted to know if it was me doing it.  I said it was, as I was in Texas at the moment, and he then said he had my travel plans in front of him.  I'd notified my bank last week that I was travelling.  So why was he checking?  He then asked me to confirm I'd used the card in Tesco last week.

I was standing outside some toilets at the time, about to use a drinking fountain.  At least I wasn't actually using the loo when it went off.