The Accidental Blogger

So anyway, I just set out to post a snide comment on my niece and nephew's blog and Blogspot led me down some sort of twisted path which resulted in my having my own blog. Hmmm. Well, I suppose I could rant about George W.Bush etc. etc. but some huge percentage of the people on line seem to have that covered, so instead I'll rant about airlines in general and Continental in particular. Namely how last weekend (St. Patty's Day actually) Continental stranded Michelle and me in Las Vegas by cancelling our flight to Newark and informing us that they could get us home by Wednesday or possibly Thursday. The annoying thing was that while they said the problem was weather related - and the NY airports were closed Friday and part of Saturday due to a snow/ice storm- our flight wasn't supposed to get to Newark until 9:30 PM Saturday and Newark Airport had opened at noon (needless to say the weather on the Vegas end was perfect). I suspect that the problem in such a case really lies with a lack of back up planes, crews etc. In other words, there is a lack of depth in the airline industry's ability to deal with these situations that causes a one day airport closure to result in a cascading series of flight cancellations that can stretch over days. I'm sure the whole thing has to do with saving money (for the airlines) but the public ends up paying the bill.

Now, granted, there are far worse places to be stranded than Vegas, but it cost us a bunch more money and Michelle two extra vacation days that she had not planned on and couldn't afford to give up. We had to scramble to find another room for three nights since we had already checked out of the Venetian where we had been staying -the Venetian has amazing rooms and a good location but they're not cheap and to stay Sat. night would have been outrageously expensive. Thanks to a call to my sister-in-law in Florida and some fancy footwork by her on the computer, we got a room at the Luxor in the pyramid. Well, I always wanted to stay there, and it was kind of neat to ride an elevator that went sideways, but frankly, the place is not what it used to be.

The upside was that we got to spend St. Patrick's Day night listening to Irish music while playing Blackjack machines outside the fake Irish pub at New York, New York. Since they were charging $25.00 a head cover charge just to get in the pub that night, I think it was less expensive to sit and slowly lose money in the machine. Did I mention that there are walkways from the Luxor to both the Mandalay Bay and the Excalibur? From the Excalibur there is a pedestrian bridge across Tropicana avenue to NY, NY. So anyway that's how we ended up there on St. Patty's day.

We also had to extend the rental car for another four days, but we did get a break in that the weekly rate then kicked in and it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

To add insult to injury, the losing streak we were both on during the time we planned to be in Vegas, continued for our unplanned stay. Yeah, I know we could have stopped gambling, but, c'mon, it's Vegas. What else is there to do?

Well, thanks to some more fancy footwork by Michelle we were finally able to get back home on Tuesday - but the only flight we could get was into LaGuardia via Cleveland. When we changed flights in Cleveland we saw stacks of cots piled in the Continental Terminal where people had obviously spent the weekend (like I say, worse places than Vegas). Fortunately, thanks again to my sister-in-law, we got a limo service to pick us up at LaGuardia and take us to where our vehicle was parked at Newark Airport.

Anyhow, I guess I've bitched enough for my first blog post.