Austin

I've found that there is always something interesting going on if you have your eyes open for it. The last couple of days are no different. Yesterday I left my warm bed and humble city at 4:30 in the morning to catch a 6:30 flight to Austin Texas. It turns out I could have just stayed in bed. The early flight that I'd arranged for, managed to get diverted in mid flight away from Houston to Dallas. Houston was fogged in. I didn't realize that Houston ever got fog. It probably doesn't, and the fog was just a punishment for my wicked ways. I just think that it was sad to punish the thousands of other people who were effect for my transgressions. Whoops sorry. I will get the ego under control. So anyway. Back to the story.

Once on the ground in Dallas, we were forced to sit on a plane with screaming children and a full toilet for 2 and a half hours. Eventually the skies over Houston clear and we are cleared to head back in that direction. We get back in the air and take a short jaunt to Houston. There we get another 45 minute wait in a hot plane full of even more screaming children and a toilet so full at this point that they lock the door. We were forced to wait 45 minutes because there were no gates available to park the plane. Eventually the plane starts to move, but not until a flight attendant has to threaten a man with being removed from the plane because he refuses to sit down until he can use the toilet. She didn't seem to see the irony of threatening to remove someone from a plane that he wants off of anyway. Come to think of it I don't think she knew what irony is anyway. Eventually we get off the plane and into the terminal. Having arrived 3 hours after my connection departed I expected that there would already have been arrangements made for a new connection. Nope. Then I'm told that I need to go to the ticket counter and make arrangements myself. I get there and there is a line a mile long. and there are only two people servicing it. I get in line and then promptly call my travel agent. After about an hour on the phone with her I'm able to get my connection change and leave the line. In that time the line had moved 4 or five people. My linemates didn't seem happy when I ran out of the line and shouting "see you later suckers". I don't think any of them made the flight. After about 12 hours traveling and 6 hours after I should have, I arrived in Austin.

The rest of the day and the evening a coworker and I finished up a few things and then had dinner and drinks. Downtown Austin is pretty cool, and I'd like the opportunity to visit it again sometime. The only thing of note is that the trees of downtown Austin appear to be infested with some sort of evil squacking bird. I never saw these birds, but I admit to being scared shitless several times while walking under a tree infested with them. They'd SQUACK something fierce, and there's no warning squack, its always full volume. That combined with the fact that for much of the time I walked around the area I was a little tipsy and I'm sure that I was a sight to see. From that point things are much less interesting. Last year on the same trip I managed to have a "religious experience". I don't think I will have the same opportunity on the way home. We will see.