I missed my Houston to Shreveport flight through no fault of my own, so I’m chilling until the next flight leaves at 5:30 pm. My Newark-to-Houston flight landed at 3 pm (i.e., 20 minutes late), and it was utterly impossible to make the 3:30 pm flight to Shreveport for three good reasons. Actually, make it four.

Houston Airport Terminal A — Thursday, 10.1, 4:35 pm

One, The Shreveport departure terminal was almost a mile away from the one I arrived at from Newark. Two, to get there I had to wait for and then ride on the slowest and dinkiest airport shuttle system in North America. Three, with my flight leaving in five or six minutes and the gate about 500 yards away, I was forced to go through security scanning a second time — thank you, Houston George Bush airport! And four, the people who booked my flight cut it too close — never book a connecting flight without at least 90 minutes between flights, and two hours if you want to up your odds even more.

The same thing happened to me in Munich on my way to Cannes a couple of years ago, and that was my fault for not being more careful about the connecting times. And no, I don’t hate Houston because of this. I hated Houston for other reasons long before.