Tuesday, November 10, 2009

getting to Portland

On October 29th I left Norfolk at 10 am to catch a 2:30 flight from Omaha to Portland via Houston.  Although it was raining I wasn't too worried about the weather as it was just rain.  After getting checked in and wondering around a bit, I decided maybe I should get a sandwich and not wait until my short layover in Houston.Then I headed for my gate.  Our plane was about 10 minutes late getting into Omaha, but I wasn't too worried about making the connection since I had a little over an hour to get to my next plane.  Just about 10 minutes or so late taking off and away we went into the wild blue yonder.  And I do mean wild.  Our pilot informed us that we would be taking a different route due to the stormy weather.  He changed routes about 3 times to miss the worst of the turbulence.  Finally arriving in Houston at 6:10 to make the 5:59 connection.  Luckily (or not)  everything in Houston was late due to storms.  Our plane was waiting for us to leave at 6:45.  Another lady passenger and I raced to the next gate that included  a shuttle ride to another part of the terminal.  We made it in plenty of time around 6:30.   On the plane, the door is shut, and we waited to leave the gate.  And we waited and waited and waited.  Finally we taxied to the runway.  The pilot informed us there were 23 planes ahead of us.  Then everything was grounded because of high winds.  The cell was supposed to pass through in about 30 minutes.  Then the wind changed so we had to taxi to another runway.  While all this was going on we were allowed to have our electronics on so I called Cindy and told her expected arrival time was 10:30 instead of 8:30 PDT.  Aound 9:30 we left Houston with arrival time 11:15.  Do the math, that is 1:15 CDT.  After getting above or around the storms the rest of the flight was uneventful.  Thankfully,  Continental still serves food.  We had a soggy cheeseburger, a salad and a bite sized Hershey bar.  Sure glad I had the sandwich in Omaha.With our safe landing in Portland at 11:15 I called Cindy from the gate and told her we were on the ground.  Thank God and technology for cell phones.  Cindy is only about 20 minutes from the airport so after I got off the plane there was just a few minutes wait for her and the girls to pick me up. 

4 comments:

Myrnagj said...

And what did you do in Portland?

Shirley said...

Hope you took along a good book.

Sue said...

More about Portland later.

I had Mary C.'s Montana Rose. I finised it before landing.

Janell said...

Mary will be glad to know you finished MR. I am glad you traveled and landed safely!