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Stranded, Again

I have flown to conferences for thirty-some years. I have had to deal with a lot of flight cancellations. Sometimes they are my return flights and I am effectively stranded waiting for the next available flight.  This has happened to me again, in Houston, this weekend.

We had some nasty weather here last night and as always it's not just the local weather that interferes with flight schedules since the planes are in constant use before I get to board them. With the government shutdown there are still issues with having too few air traffic controllers and from what I've read online that may apply here.

I was raised to take pride in my country but we've had several decades of penny-pinching politicians that want to make sure that ordinary people don't have quality infrastructure, and the voters keep putting them into office so that's who we are as a country.

Early on rebooking a canceled flight required a lot of phone calls, often dropped just when you thought you were getting somewhere. Early on it made sense to go to the airport to deal with the problem, if only to go back to your hotel when it was resolved. Now having a laptop connected to the internet makes it pretty smooth.

Sometimes when I'm stranded I feel encouraged to explore a city more; I was stranded in New Orleans for three extra days once (the hub in Atlanta was snowed in) and did walk around it quite a lot. Today is rainy with thunderstorms and I think I'll just do some work on my laptop and get a good night's sleep.

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