houston, we have a problem ...

i feel very fortunate today ...

this week i was working near the Texas-Mexico border. i was scheduled to fly back to Toronto on friday, but thankfully someone in our group had the foresight to insist that we leave on thursday morning in order to give us 'plenty of time' to avoid hurricane Rita ...

our itinerary took us from our Texas border town to Toronto, with a quick connection in Houston, the hub of Continental airlines. we were late getting into Houston because of major disruptions there ... half of the airport/Continental staff failed to show up for work because they were evacuating the area! as we arrived, we could see the chaos from the air ... every road heading north had bumper-to-bumper traffic!

having missed our connection, we were put on Continental's 18h45 flight to Toronto. rumours were swirling that more of their flights would be cancelled, so we booked ourselves on an earlier American Airlines flight through Chicago. we departed at around 17h00 ... and were later told that Houston airport closed it's gates at 18h00!