Why I don’t like connecting flights

Jack called this afternoon to tell me that his parents, who were on route from Maryland to Colorado Springs, had to make a connecting flight in Houston Airport yesterday. Unfortunately, the flight to Colorado Springs was cancelled due to Rita. Fortunately, while my sisters-in-law were scrambling to find a flight for them out of Houston, my in-laws were able to walk onto a flight to Denver.

I got spoiled the two years we lived in Dallas: we could find a direct, non-stop flight to almost everywhere.

Hurricane Names

The Washington Post article Rita Is Gaining Force in the Gulf answers a question I had about Hurricane Names: what happens in a very active year when there are more hurricanes than allotted names.

But there is a finite number of preselected names — 21 — each summer, and after Rita, only four are left this year: Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma. If that list is exhausted, the meteorological group will have to revert to a backup plan: naming storms using the Greek alphabet, beginning with alpha, beta and gamma.