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Everyone is standing up in the airplane at once.
Then, abruptly, the power cuts out!
Seven Hours Earlier.
I love leaving Hawaii.
Perhaps that didn't come out right.
I find that the the departure from Hawaii beautifully aligns with my schedule. I'm up at a bit before 7am, just about the same time that I'm up every Hawaiian morning, as the sun streams in the window.
There's time for me to shower, then we have a casual breakfast with the folks. Just bagels and cream cheese for me today. I don't want anything to upset my unruly systems before we get down to a day of traveling.
At 8.15 or so we leave the house. We're bright and bushy-tailed, totally unlike our experience coming to Hawaii, when we have to survive on half-a-night's sleep.
We make it from Lihue to Honolulu without problem. The puddle-jump is the most casual flight you could ever take, so it's a damned shame that it's not priced cheaply enough to really allow it to be casual anymore. (Not that that matters as a single leg of our longer trip.)
We float through the entirely familiar terminal at Honolulu, with just a brief stop at the Agricultural check point. As always I wonder if they'll complain about trail mix (or other food) from Berkeley.
There's a minor disappointment when we dine. We always have lunch at a food court over in the international terminals that overlooks a pleasant Chinese garden. Except this year all the windows to the garden are covered by plywood walls. They're apparently doing heavy construction over half the garden. The result feels a bit claustrophobic and stuffy, like the entire airport at Kahului, where we briefly stopped in 2013 due to extremely cheap tickets. It's a disappointment for the generally nice Honolulu airport though.
An hour and a half later, we're boarding our plane to Oakland, and I say to Kimberly, "This time the trip is going to be entirely uneventful."
I sit in my seat flipping between Swamp Thing and Orb Sceptre Throne. I'm finally up to "Sceptre" after eight days of reading. I vaguely sense that time is going by and I try to remember when the plane is supposed to take off, but I only really pay attention to the boarding time nowadays.
Several times I convince myself the plane is backing away from the terminal, but each time it's an optical illusion.
I believe we're supposed to leave at 1.35, so at 1.37 or so I think I should pull out my boarding pass to check.
Then the captain comes on with an apologetic tone in his voice.
This is not a good sign.
The captain explains that there are mechanical problems, and we are being shunted to another plane. I have visions of the four-hour delay that awaited passengers when Hawaiian's last plane died the previous Wednesday, which cascaded into a 3.5 hour delay for us on Thursday morning. Fortunately, we're in Honolulu, which is filled with Hawaiian airplanes.
We prepare to deplane, and then the power abruptly cuts out. I expect screams, but they don't come. Multiple people comment that it's a good thing we weren't in the air!
We march down about four gates, which is a considerable distance at Honolulu, then wait. Waiting is the main economic activity of airports.
The new plane has to be cleaned and catered before we can reboard. I'm all for both.
We reboard. Then, we nervously watch the clock on the new plane. Finally we take off.
The main problem with the flight is that it seems to be full of collicky children. There is constant screaming the full flight back. The word "constantly" is not an exaggeration. The worst is a three-year-old (or so) across from us, who seems like a feral animal. At one point he starts writhing around, kicking and hitting his mom and sister. At another point he keeps kicking the seat in front of him again and again.
Mom is often more interested in her phone and delegates six-year-old (or so) sister to take care of the wild child.
At first I think there might be something wrong with the kid, but then another of mom's six children has a total breakdown later in the trip. Mom idly mentions that they're all home-schooled, and it all clicks into place.
On our way off the plane, the pre-school teacher unlucky enough to sit in front of mom and tot confides to us that she's never seen anything like it in her twenty years of teaching.
Hawaiian has one last trick to play: we recover our suitcase and find it covered in duct tape.
At first we think the've ruined it, but it turns out they've just covered the inset handle in the bottom of the suitcase because it offended them.
We decide to take a taxi home and arrive just a few minutes shy of midnight.
The cats hover around us, anxious and perturbed, but happy we're home.
I agree.
Then, abruptly, the power cuts out!
Seven Hours Earlier.
I love leaving Hawaii.
Perhaps that didn't come out right.
I find that the the departure from Hawaii beautifully aligns with my schedule. I'm up at a bit before 7am, just about the same time that I'm up every Hawaiian morning, as the sun streams in the window.
There's time for me to shower, then we have a casual breakfast with the folks. Just bagels and cream cheese for me today. I don't want anything to upset my unruly systems before we get down to a day of traveling.
At 8.15 or so we leave the house. We're bright and bushy-tailed, totally unlike our experience coming to Hawaii, when we have to survive on half-a-night's sleep.
We make it from Lihue to Honolulu without problem. The puddle-jump is the most casual flight you could ever take, so it's a damned shame that it's not priced cheaply enough to really allow it to be casual anymore. (Not that that matters as a single leg of our longer trip.)
We float through the entirely familiar terminal at Honolulu, with just a brief stop at the Agricultural check point. As always I wonder if they'll complain about trail mix (or other food) from Berkeley.
There's a minor disappointment when we dine. We always have lunch at a food court over in the international terminals that overlooks a pleasant Chinese garden. Except this year all the windows to the garden are covered by plywood walls. They're apparently doing heavy construction over half the garden. The result feels a bit claustrophobic and stuffy, like the entire airport at Kahului, where we briefly stopped in 2013 due to extremely cheap tickets. It's a disappointment for the generally nice Honolulu airport though.
An hour and a half later, we're boarding our plane to Oakland, and I say to Kimberly, "This time the trip is going to be entirely uneventful."
I sit in my seat flipping between Swamp Thing and Orb Sceptre Throne. I'm finally up to "Sceptre" after eight days of reading. I vaguely sense that time is going by and I try to remember when the plane is supposed to take off, but I only really pay attention to the boarding time nowadays.
Several times I convince myself the plane is backing away from the terminal, but each time it's an optical illusion.
I believe we're supposed to leave at 1.35, so at 1.37 or so I think I should pull out my boarding pass to check.
Then the captain comes on with an apologetic tone in his voice.
This is not a good sign.
The captain explains that there are mechanical problems, and we are being shunted to another plane. I have visions of the four-hour delay that awaited passengers when Hawaiian's last plane died the previous Wednesday, which cascaded into a 3.5 hour delay for us on Thursday morning. Fortunately, we're in Honolulu, which is filled with Hawaiian airplanes.
We prepare to deplane, and then the power abruptly cuts out. I expect screams, but they don't come. Multiple people comment that it's a good thing we weren't in the air!
We march down about four gates, which is a considerable distance at Honolulu, then wait. Waiting is the main economic activity of airports.
The new plane has to be cleaned and catered before we can reboard. I'm all for both.
We reboard. Then, we nervously watch the clock on the new plane. Finally we take off.
The main problem with the flight is that it seems to be full of collicky children. There is constant screaming the full flight back. The word "constantly" is not an exaggeration. The worst is a three-year-old (or so) across from us, who seems like a feral animal. At one point he starts writhing around, kicking and hitting his mom and sister. At another point he keeps kicking the seat in front of him again and again.
Mom is often more interested in her phone and delegates six-year-old (or so) sister to take care of the wild child.
At first I think there might be something wrong with the kid, but then another of mom's six children has a total breakdown later in the trip. Mom idly mentions that they're all home-schooled, and it all clicks into place.
On our way off the plane, the pre-school teacher unlucky enough to sit in front of mom and tot confides to us that she's never seen anything like it in her twenty years of teaching.
Hawaiian has one last trick to play: we recover our suitcase and find it covered in duct tape.
At first we think the've ruined it, but it turns out they've just covered the inset handle in the bottom of the suitcase because it offended them.
We decide to take a taxi home and arrive just a few minutes shy of midnight.
The cats hover around us, anxious and perturbed, but happy we're home.
I agree.