Ok, so I take it back. Continental doesn’t rock.
After tweeting in praise for Continental I must retract my compliments. See, while they did reschedule the flight I missed free of charge they told me I would have 60 minutes to clear immigrations and customs in Houston and connect to my San Diego flight. I’ve done that before many times so I didn’t think it would be a problem till I actually looked at the tickets and noticed they quoted me the wrong times. My flight landed in Houston at 5:25 and my connecting flight was for 6pm.
I knew it was going to be tight when it took till 5:35 to taxi up to the terminal and deplane, but I gave it the good ole college try, and despite needing to piss so bad my teeth were floating I did in fact clear immigrations and customs, get the train to the other terminal and run to the gate in time. I was already making plans to make a bee line for the bathroom when I was cheerily informed at the gate that “We knew you weren’t going to make it and we booked you on the next flight.”
I asked what they meant, I’m there, the plane is there and a guy just got on the plane right after I arrived, but when they handed me the next flight’s tickets it was clear that they bumped me for someone else and there was no use trying to argue about it. In any case it’s untoward to argue with a ruptured bladder so when nearby bathroom caught my eye that was that and their evil deed was a fait accompli and in Houston I was to stay till after 9pm.
My single protest was a heartfelt “fuck Continental” at the restroom urinal. When heads turned inquisitively in my direction I held the traditional stare at the wall not a foot in front of me and didn’t explain. You aren’t supposed to look sideways at a urinal anyway, you are supposed to stare at the wall in front of you like it’s a mile away and you need to make out the words on a sign…
I called my buddy who had already rescheduled the airport yet again and sheepishly informed him that there had been yet another missed flight and that I’d be gettting in close to midnight. Then I had some time to kill so I headed to the parking lot and read a few books. The first was one of those self-help books I loathe, but that several friends insisted I read and that I happened to have with me. It was The Richest Man in Babylon, whose cliffnotes can be summed up as: 1) save money 2) make your money make money 3) don’t risk it on dumb investments. In other words, nothing revolutionary here, but at least it was a very short read.
So I picked up Freakanomics, and was well into that by the time my next flight came around. I finished it on the plane, and while it was interesting it was superficial (I’d love to have seen more substantiation of the claims made, even though I don’t necessarily disagree with them) and I’ll write about it when I finish the rest of the “bonus material” in the book.
But I digest. What I really came to write was that I retract my praise of Continental. I refrain from heaping scorn, but they no longer rock in my book.