I had previously flown non-stop to Los Angeles a couple of months before on an employee spouse pass on a National Airlines B747 to pick up 5.5 cases of cold Coors beer that was packed away into three empty suitcases. I left MIA at 9:00am, arrived at LAX at 11:10am their time, hired a cab to take me to a supermarket in Westchester, packed the beer into the suitcases with the help of the cabbie and managed to catch the non-stop B747 back to MIA, arriving at 8pm. Eleven hours cross-country and back.

This time I decided to go to Houston, cutting the time and distance. My good friend Rob Greene was willing to pick me up at the airport, take me to a supermarket, and then back to the airport to catch my flight back. Rob and I had worked together at United Airlines the year before and we stayed in touch after he moved to Houston. Rob put in a career with Continental Airlines in Houston afterwards and I'm not sure if he retired from them after the merger with United Airlines.

Background: back then Coors was not sold east of the Mississippi River and it was liquid gold, or so it seemed, to some of us beer drinkers back in South Florida. Another buddy, Bob Paget, who also worked with me at United Airlines, suggested that if I would make the Coors runs he would pay half my pass charges on National if I sold him half the Coors at whatever I paid for it.
All I remember from back then was that the Coors tasted mighty damn good! : )