The bloke at the check-in desk was most helpful, and I certainly needed some help: my onward flight from Dallas to Amarillo had been cancelled, and some re-routing was necessary. It was still early in the day, with hardly anyone else around, and he personally led me to a different desk where I could change my route to fly via Houston. In Houston, I was informed, I would have to collect my suitcase and pass through immigration and customs, but as there were 3 hours between landing and my next flight, that should present no problem. Three whole hours… even allowing an hour for the immigration and customs formalities, I thought, that would give me time to have a coffee and relax. Meticulous as ever, I checked the boarding pass for the Houston-Amarillo flight: Gate A14… ok, got that.
The long-haul flight took us by a somewhat circuitous route (as I noted from the map display), skirting the North Atlantic just south of Iceland and Greenland, across Canada and the Great Lakes, down the course of the Mississippi and then across Texas to Houston. Surely it would have saved time and fuel to cross in a straight line, directly across the wide expanses of the ocean? Perhaps they were concerned that we might have to drift too far to land if the plane had to ditch in mid-ocean. I know I would rather be treading water somewhere off the Azores or Bermuda than around Iceland or Greenland. For a while, I entered the world of heroic fantasy again, sewing seat cushions together (apparently they can be used as buoyancy aids) to form a gigantic raft, and using an enormously dilated condom as a makeshift sail to bring a grateful band of survivors back to land. This proved more entertaining and, if anything, more plausible than ‘Gravity’, one of the in-flight movies. The effects of a short night’s sleep started to catch up. An empty water bottle toppled to land near my feet. Unable to reach it, I just thought “As long as it doesn’t get stuck under the brake pedal…” and dozed off with a smile on my face.
When I woke, we were already flying over the Great Lakes on the border between Canada and the USA, a region of snow and ice sheets at this time of year. In between watching the instantly forgettable new releases from Hollywood, I tracked our progress until we came to land at Houston, Texas. A smooth, sweeping descent, a bump, and then the tinny announcement from the pilot: “We have had to land at some distance from our terminal; please bear with us and keep your seat belts fastened while we taxi towards it.” And so we taxied at around 30 mph, the minutes piling up, until we came to rest after 35 minutes at the point to alight. Jeez… I know Texas is big, but I could have driven from Harrogate to Leeds in that time and that speed. I was watching the clock – that was already more than half an hour off my leisurely 3 hours between flights. Hopefully, the immigration and customs formalities would not take too long.
Hastening to the vast hall where passports are checked and the American authorities satisfy themselves that people who can afford a trans-Atlantic flight are not coming to the States to plant bombs or even, heavens forbid, do a decent day’s work, I encountered a queue of truly mind-blowing proportions. I kid you not; it snaked back and forth for about a kilometre (that’s 1100 yards in old money) and there must have been at least 1500 people waiting for their entry to be processed by a mere dozen tired-looking officials. There was plenty of time to contemplate the diversity of humanity thronging to enter The Land of the Free: many Latinos, a scattering of genuine Texan types wearing Stetsons, a whole gaggle of Chinese and some who were clearly Moslem… Oh Gods, I thought, please don’t let me get stuck behind a Moslem; they are bound to get the third degree. After diverting myself with calculations and observations of this nature, all the while shuffling forward in this serpentine procession, I was becoming acutely aware that the time to my next flight was dwindling alarmingly. I cast a couple spells that have rarely failed me and was rewarded by a sudden acceleration of progress. Despite that, it still took me well over an hour to get to the head of the queue, where a weary immigration official asked me to put all my fingers and thumbs on a touch-sensitive pad for identification. Truth to tell, I can’t even remember allowing myself to be fingerprinted for this or any other purpose; it makes you wonder what information ‘they’ have on you. Perhaps it is all just for show and intimidation. In any case, the guy behind the desk was polite and he looked as though he was enjoying this even less than I was – a far cry from the arrogant prick who had questioned me on my previous visit to the USA.
Then it was a race up and down escalators and across halls to retrieve my suitcase and join yet another queue to get it checked through customs. “Hello Sir. How are you today?” asked the customs official, automatically. “My day is getting worse by the minute”, I growled, and he waved me through. The next step was to get to gate A14. It was cited clearly on my boarding ticket, remember?