Home on the range

My plane out of LA for Houston was late again, this time by about 30 minutes, although they did make up some of that time on the flight. The so-called First class on Continental is roughly the same as the business class on the smaller planes inside Australia. Ie the first 3 rows are 2 wide instead of 3 wide and a bit more legroom. Our seats were also of leather rather than cloth and our alcoholic drinks were free. I had 3 scotches and since they bring you little bottles instead of pouring the spirits in, I was able to have relatively weak drinks and have 3 2/3 full bottles for later. A good thing too, I was thinking as I checked out my rental car later. 3 full strength drinks may have been too much.

Usually your bags are first off the carousel when you fly business/first but mine did not appear. I checked with the baggage service, who advised me to wait another 10 minutes and then come back. The second clerk found my nags had already arrived, in a minute or so of checking the computer. Not sure why the first guy didn’t find them.

Houston Airport is big – they have lots of land – and the rental cars are separate with a shuttle bus there from the terminals. I thought I’d be getting a 2-door sports car, based on the picture on the web site, but in stead have a Saturn VUE, which is a SUV. A bit like a small 4WD car in Australia, but without actually having 4WD. It has a V6 engine.

The GPS wanted me to take the tollway but I had picked up that the cars have Eztag, which automatically charges you when you go through the tollgates. If you use this once, the rental company then charges you 2-50 per day every day for processing even if you don’t use it again. Since the office is quite close to the hotel, I knew I wouldn’t need it and heading t for the I-45, the main highway North and not a tollway.

I then made a wrong turn heading for Houston rather than Dallas when I got there and was told to proceed south for 0.7 miles and do a U turn. I eventually got to the hotel and they couldn’t find my reservation, so I had to get out my laptop to find the email with the reservation number. It turns out the booking was in the name of the office manager on the computer, and not my name or the name of the girl whose credit card was used, although all 3 names were on the paper reservation.

The room its self is a largish studio apartment with a kitchen, desk and lounge area as well as the sleeping area and bathroom. It’s a big L shaped area but quite well set out. It is designed for longer stays than a normal hotel room. There is free wireless Internet here as well. There’s no restaurant at the hotel itself although they do provide breakfast.

It’s only a couple of km to the Market street area, think Subiaco or Claremont - Restaurants and posh shops, although most of the latter were closed as it was Sunday night and a large mall is just across the road from there.

It had been about 35 hours door to door with only 5 or 6 hours sleep, so after a Mexican meal, I headed back to my room. I really needed a shower but I was so tired I just went straight to bed at about 9.

At 11, I was startled awake by a call on my mobile from one of the guys on a rig in WA. I managed to get back to sleep until 3-30 and then gave up and got up. I scanned the TV but since I don’t need a steam cleaner or cheap jewellery (or hymns and preaching) many of the channels weren’t very interesting.

I called my parents in Adelaide where it was around dinner time and have now updated this blog.

I’m going to try for a few more hours sleep before I get up for the first day at the office.