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In Kalaheo, I wake up at 2am coughing, for the second night in a row. I work through warm water, Tussin Severe, and cough drops, and the coughing is still going around 2.30, when Mary wanders downstairs. She offers to make me some hot water with lemon and honey, and since nothing else works, I accept. It takes me a good, long time to down the lemon-y concoction, but by the time I do, the coughing has pretty thoroughly stopped. I head back to bed at 3am.
I wake maybe half-a-dozen times in the next four hours, but nonetheless manage to sleep until nearly 7am.
When I get up I'm feeling really ... worn out. Like I haven't been sleeping for four days. But I've just got a shadow of the sore throat and swallowing problems. Still, I'm dreading the idea of having a coughing attack on the plane. Kimberly and I have talked about one or the other of us getting stuck in Hawaii, but I really want to get home, where my bed is and where the cats are, and where I can go to my doctor tomorrow if I want to. So I continue pushing forward as if I'm going to catch a plane.
Mary very kindly makes me another cup of lemon and honey for breakfast, but I can only stomach a quarter of it this time. In fact, I can't stomach much at breakfast. Still, I'm pretty sure it's helping the coughing.
We leave about two and a half hours before our flight. Plenty of time, even with a stop to get some non-sugar-free cough drops (because chain sucking the crappy sugar-free CVS brand is making me nauseous) and a nasal decongestant (so that I don't rupture my ear drums), as Lihue is a teeny airport, and it's never crowded.
(That's foreshadowing.)
We get to Lihue about an hour and a half before our flight and oh-my-gosh I've never seen the TSA lines so crazy. I tell Kimberly, "It's going to be that sort of day." All I need to do is get a luggage tag and toss our baggage at the drop-off, so I tell Kimberly to get in the TSA line while I'm waiting, which is bad sportsmanship, but I'm out of patience on this vay-cay.
The kiosk-to-luggage-dropoff path is an absolute madhouse, but at least there's one guy controlling traffic. I get a little annoyed at him at first, because he's just being really curt as I try and figure out what's going on. But once I realize how helpful he's being for the actual situation, I make sure to thank him kindly and smile as he points me to a kiosk. I adopt the smile-and-thanks facade for the rest of the airport entry, and it makes the experience much happier.
I find Kimberly several yards up the TSA line, which doesn't seem bad, then a mass of people suddenly peels off the line and heads in the opposite direction. When he dropped us off, my dad had been saying that they sometimes had two other TSA checkpoints open at Lihue, and though they didn't appear to be when we got here, we surmise that one of them has opened up. This is verified when the loudspeaker comes on to verify that "TSA Checkpoint 3" is now open, to the north of the terminal. I ask Kimberly if she wants to go in that direction, but she says no, she doesn't want to rush around with her broken foot and all (though she is riding Scootie, who we brought mainly for the airport terminals).
But then some guy from the airport comes through "strongly advising" all of us still out on the sidewalk, as opposed to in the actual TSA line, to go to the other checkpoint. So we rush about, with Kimberly's broken foot (and Scootie). And there's mass chaos over at that other entry too, as the line is wrapping in front of some benches (way out on the sidewalk) and we all have to rearrange.
So we're now standing in another TSA line, and it looks just as long (but maybe it isn't inside) and this one isn't moving at all.
Then Kimberly spots a sign over the entry, which says no wheelchairs.
Now, obviously Kimberly doesn't have a wheelchair, but no one ever has any signs about knee scooters. So I go over and ask Information, and they say, no, they don't think that scooters can be taken through there, followed by a somewhat incredulous, "They told you to come over here??" (Yes, they did, but they were neither discriminating, nor giving additional information like, "For our customers without mobility impairments.")
I think she sees my heart drop at going back to the first line, and my imagining that our 90 minutes doesn't look like much at this point. So she eagerly points to a TSA agent going by and says, "He can tell you." He does, saying the same thing, but follows up with, "But you can just go through the wheelchair access at the main checkpoint." Which makes sense: if we can't go through this checkpoint that we've been pointed to because a scooter is a wheelchair then we certainly should get the fast track into the other check point because of the same. (And I actually thought this back in Oakland, as I watched Kimberly wheel Scootie back and forth through all the TSA aisles, but she was already doing that when I was considering whether there might be a special entry for her.)
So we go up the wheel chair entry, and the agent there immediately waves us in, bypassing I don't know how much line. I give explanations of being sent back and forth, and she's confused at first, but finally groks what happened. I doubt it was even necessary, because the special entry is for disabilities like Kimberly's. And in another few minutes we're filling bins with stuff to go through security.
There's new trauma here.
Kimberly and I get separated because they need to give her a hand pat-down after getting her and her scooter through, but I'm just going to go through the millimeter machine so that I can grab our stuff that's already going through the x-ray machine. I must have sensed how frazzled she was because I ask if she's OK before I go through, but she says yes.
And a moment later I'm getting a full pat-down too, because of my boarding pass in my back pocket. And afterward I look back and see she's still on the other side, and in tears. I step up to the TSA agents who have just let me through, and I point through the millimeter wave machine, and I say, "I'm worried about my wife." I point to her, sitting on her scooter on the other side of the machine, crying. "It looks like she doesn't know where she's going." And one of the TSA agents is through the machine like a rocket, and I believe she's the one that brings Kimberly though a minute later. She's trying to explain that she's one who's going to give Kimberly her search, and I ask something in confusion, and she gives me a curt and annoyed response: "I'M the one HELPING your wife." And I say "Thank you very much" and smile and her whole demeanor changes (and Kimberly says she was wonderful).
I then collect our stuff and discover my water bottle has gone missing. I go back and look for it, and a TSA agent is holding it up saying, "This is full of water!" And I realize exactly what has happened: (1) I'd filled it up before airport, which I don't usually do, because I'm worried about my throat drying out and setting me back; (2) then we're running all around; and (3) we don't pass by the water dump at the regular entrance to the checkpoint. I'm very apologetic for wasting his time, but he just smiles and takes it off to dump, then brings it back to me.
I then sit down just outside the checkpoint to get everything back together. and Kimberly is on the other side of a big plastic wall, and she's getting the most extensive search I've ever seen. Most of it concerns Scootie, who is swabbed like a dozen times. In case any individual part of her is a bomb, apparently. It probably takes Kimberly ten minutes to get out of there, but the TSA agent is clearly being very friendly about it all.
In fact, every single TSA agent we met at Lihue was extremely friendly.
By this time I've decided that the whole airport is a trainwreck because they're on some type of super high security alert. My best guess is that it's due to the horrible massacre in Sir Lanka on Sunday and/or terrorists claiming responsibility for it this morning. Because TSA management is always great at solving yesterday's problems with tomorrow's procedures.
While Kimberly is getting her stuff together, I refill our water bottles, and then we're walking to our gate, which turns out to be on the entire other side of the airport, as it happens really near security checkpoint 3. It's not a big airport, but still we're walking for several minutes.
We slide into the gate just as they announce they're about to start preboarding and we skim around to the front of the line, and then we're the first to board when they ask for people with mobility problems and children. Whew!
We realize that we don't have a tag for Scootie, but the guy checking boarding passes already has one in his hand. Kimberly slides it on as we go, but neglects to collect the claim part of the tag.
(That looks like foreshadowing, but turns out not to be.)
And that's the end of the morning for what one must admit was our least successful trip to Hawaii, now compounded with our most crazy departure (though as I recall the departure from the Big Island was pretty chaotic too, though not at this level).
Did I mention it was our lucky 13th trip to Hawaii? I think it is. 2001, 2005, and 2009-2019 if I've put it all together right. I earlier told my dad, "We can just call this our 12th visit to Kauai, since we went to the Big Island last year, then when we return it'll be our 14th visit to the islands." I thought, like an office building, we could skip unlucky 13, but apparently not.
I was sick on one other visit. Something I'd picked up at Endgame (much to my annoyance) just before leaving. And I've gotten sick on the plane ride back at least once. But I think this was the only time I got sick on the plane ride in, leaving me ill for the entire trip, and this has certainly been the sickest I've been on the islands (and in fact one of my worst sicks ever).
On these new 3x3 planes, we play Russian Roulette for our seat mate. He's a boat renovator from Kauai, who just finished with two boats and promised himself a vacation the second he did, so now he's off to Lake Tahoe. He's a little loud and boisterous but quiets down when we get going.
Then he starts playing his iPad videos without headphones.
ARRRGH!
I grin and bear it for maybe ten minutes and by then the noise is driving me to frenzied rage. I'm pretty polite when I ask "Excuse me, could you please put on headphones", but a little snarkier as we go a little further. Anywho, it turns out that he's needing to buy earphones from the scam cart, but in the meantime of course realizes that it's perfectly acceptable to blast his audio in this enclosed, claustrophobic little tube of metal that we're all stuck in for the next five hours. I grit my teeth and watch the scam cart slowly approaching.
Then it goes by with him ignoring it.
!)*(#.
A minute later he realizes he's missed it and starts gesturing and the scam cart comes back. He buy his headphones and a water. Because it is the scam cart, put out there a few minutes before Hawaiian Air will give away water. And shortly thereafter, there's blessed quiet.
He seemed a nice enough guy; we talked more when we were waiting to deplane. But I can never fathom the mindset that it's OK to bother everyone else on the plane with your audio. It's been happening at least once on most planes I've been on lately.
We land on time, Lyft gets us home quickly, we have Taco Bell to celebrate, something I've been craving in my days of feeling crappy.
And my cold has receded to the point where I've clearly on post-cold symptoms at this point ... though the coughing is still pretty horrible, and I worry I might have a fifth day in a row of bad sleep. Perfect timing; welcome home.
(The cats are thrilled to see us.)
I wake maybe half-a-dozen times in the next four hours, but nonetheless manage to sleep until nearly 7am.
When I get up I'm feeling really ... worn out. Like I haven't been sleeping for four days. But I've just got a shadow of the sore throat and swallowing problems. Still, I'm dreading the idea of having a coughing attack on the plane. Kimberly and I have talked about one or the other of us getting stuck in Hawaii, but I really want to get home, where my bed is and where the cats are, and where I can go to my doctor tomorrow if I want to. So I continue pushing forward as if I'm going to catch a plane.
Mary very kindly makes me another cup of lemon and honey for breakfast, but I can only stomach a quarter of it this time. In fact, I can't stomach much at breakfast. Still, I'm pretty sure it's helping the coughing.
We leave about two and a half hours before our flight. Plenty of time, even with a stop to get some non-sugar-free cough drops (because chain sucking the crappy sugar-free CVS brand is making me nauseous) and a nasal decongestant (so that I don't rupture my ear drums), as Lihue is a teeny airport, and it's never crowded.
(That's foreshadowing.)
We get to Lihue about an hour and a half before our flight and oh-my-gosh I've never seen the TSA lines so crazy. I tell Kimberly, "It's going to be that sort of day." All I need to do is get a luggage tag and toss our baggage at the drop-off, so I tell Kimberly to get in the TSA line while I'm waiting, which is bad sportsmanship, but I'm out of patience on this vay-cay.
The kiosk-to-luggage-dropoff path is an absolute madhouse, but at least there's one guy controlling traffic. I get a little annoyed at him at first, because he's just being really curt as I try and figure out what's going on. But once I realize how helpful he's being for the actual situation, I make sure to thank him kindly and smile as he points me to a kiosk. I adopt the smile-and-thanks facade for the rest of the airport entry, and it makes the experience much happier.
I find Kimberly several yards up the TSA line, which doesn't seem bad, then a mass of people suddenly peels off the line and heads in the opposite direction. When he dropped us off, my dad had been saying that they sometimes had two other TSA checkpoints open at Lihue, and though they didn't appear to be when we got here, we surmise that one of them has opened up. This is verified when the loudspeaker comes on to verify that "TSA Checkpoint 3" is now open, to the north of the terminal. I ask Kimberly if she wants to go in that direction, but she says no, she doesn't want to rush around with her broken foot and all (though she is riding Scootie, who we brought mainly for the airport terminals).
But then some guy from the airport comes through "strongly advising" all of us still out on the sidewalk, as opposed to in the actual TSA line, to go to the other checkpoint. So we rush about, with Kimberly's broken foot (and Scootie). And there's mass chaos over at that other entry too, as the line is wrapping in front of some benches (way out on the sidewalk) and we all have to rearrange.
So we're now standing in another TSA line, and it looks just as long (but maybe it isn't inside) and this one isn't moving at all.
Then Kimberly spots a sign over the entry, which says no wheelchairs.
Now, obviously Kimberly doesn't have a wheelchair, but no one ever has any signs about knee scooters. So I go over and ask Information, and they say, no, they don't think that scooters can be taken through there, followed by a somewhat incredulous, "They told you to come over here??" (Yes, they did, but they were neither discriminating, nor giving additional information like, "For our customers without mobility impairments.")
I think she sees my heart drop at going back to the first line, and my imagining that our 90 minutes doesn't look like much at this point. So she eagerly points to a TSA agent going by and says, "He can tell you." He does, saying the same thing, but follows up with, "But you can just go through the wheelchair access at the main checkpoint." Which makes sense: if we can't go through this checkpoint that we've been pointed to because a scooter is a wheelchair then we certainly should get the fast track into the other check point because of the same. (And I actually thought this back in Oakland, as I watched Kimberly wheel Scootie back and forth through all the TSA aisles, but she was already doing that when I was considering whether there might be a special entry for her.)
So we go up the wheel chair entry, and the agent there immediately waves us in, bypassing I don't know how much line. I give explanations of being sent back and forth, and she's confused at first, but finally groks what happened. I doubt it was even necessary, because the special entry is for disabilities like Kimberly's. And in another few minutes we're filling bins with stuff to go through security.
There's new trauma here.
Kimberly and I get separated because they need to give her a hand pat-down after getting her and her scooter through, but I'm just going to go through the millimeter machine so that I can grab our stuff that's already going through the x-ray machine. I must have sensed how frazzled she was because I ask if she's OK before I go through, but she says yes.
And a moment later I'm getting a full pat-down too, because of my boarding pass in my back pocket. And afterward I look back and see she's still on the other side, and in tears. I step up to the TSA agents who have just let me through, and I point through the millimeter wave machine, and I say, "I'm worried about my wife." I point to her, sitting on her scooter on the other side of the machine, crying. "It looks like she doesn't know where she's going." And one of the TSA agents is through the machine like a rocket, and I believe she's the one that brings Kimberly though a minute later. She's trying to explain that she's one who's going to give Kimberly her search, and I ask something in confusion, and she gives me a curt and annoyed response: "I'M the one HELPING your wife." And I say "Thank you very much" and smile and her whole demeanor changes (and Kimberly says she was wonderful).
I then collect our stuff and discover my water bottle has gone missing. I go back and look for it, and a TSA agent is holding it up saying, "This is full of water!" And I realize exactly what has happened: (1) I'd filled it up before airport, which I don't usually do, because I'm worried about my throat drying out and setting me back; (2) then we're running all around; and (3) we don't pass by the water dump at the regular entrance to the checkpoint. I'm very apologetic for wasting his time, but he just smiles and takes it off to dump, then brings it back to me.
I then sit down just outside the checkpoint to get everything back together. and Kimberly is on the other side of a big plastic wall, and she's getting the most extensive search I've ever seen. Most of it concerns Scootie, who is swabbed like a dozen times. In case any individual part of her is a bomb, apparently. It probably takes Kimberly ten minutes to get out of there, but the TSA agent is clearly being very friendly about it all.
In fact, every single TSA agent we met at Lihue was extremely friendly.
By this time I've decided that the whole airport is a trainwreck because they're on some type of super high security alert. My best guess is that it's due to the horrible massacre in Sir Lanka on Sunday and/or terrorists claiming responsibility for it this morning. Because TSA management is always great at solving yesterday's problems with tomorrow's procedures.
While Kimberly is getting her stuff together, I refill our water bottles, and then we're walking to our gate, which turns out to be on the entire other side of the airport, as it happens really near security checkpoint 3. It's not a big airport, but still we're walking for several minutes.
We slide into the gate just as they announce they're about to start preboarding and we skim around to the front of the line, and then we're the first to board when they ask for people with mobility problems and children. Whew!
We realize that we don't have a tag for Scootie, but the guy checking boarding passes already has one in his hand. Kimberly slides it on as we go, but neglects to collect the claim part of the tag.
(That looks like foreshadowing, but turns out not to be.)
And that's the end of the morning for what one must admit was our least successful trip to Hawaii, now compounded with our most crazy departure (though as I recall the departure from the Big Island was pretty chaotic too, though not at this level).
Did I mention it was our lucky 13th trip to Hawaii? I think it is. 2001, 2005, and 2009-2019 if I've put it all together right. I earlier told my dad, "We can just call this our 12th visit to Kauai, since we went to the Big Island last year, then when we return it'll be our 14th visit to the islands." I thought, like an office building, we could skip unlucky 13, but apparently not.
I was sick on one other visit. Something I'd picked up at Endgame (much to my annoyance) just before leaving. And I've gotten sick on the plane ride back at least once. But I think this was the only time I got sick on the plane ride in, leaving me ill for the entire trip, and this has certainly been the sickest I've been on the islands (and in fact one of my worst sicks ever).
On these new 3x3 planes, we play Russian Roulette for our seat mate. He's a boat renovator from Kauai, who just finished with two boats and promised himself a vacation the second he did, so now he's off to Lake Tahoe. He's a little loud and boisterous but quiets down when we get going.
Then he starts playing his iPad videos without headphones.
ARRRGH!
I grin and bear it for maybe ten minutes and by then the noise is driving me to frenzied rage. I'm pretty polite when I ask "Excuse me, could you please put on headphones", but a little snarkier as we go a little further. Anywho, it turns out that he's needing to buy earphones from the scam cart, but in the meantime of course realizes that it's perfectly acceptable to blast his audio in this enclosed, claustrophobic little tube of metal that we're all stuck in for the next five hours. I grit my teeth and watch the scam cart slowly approaching.
Then it goes by with him ignoring it.
!)*(#.
A minute later he realizes he's missed it and starts gesturing and the scam cart comes back. He buy his headphones and a water. Because it is the scam cart, put out there a few minutes before Hawaiian Air will give away water. And shortly thereafter, there's blessed quiet.
He seemed a nice enough guy; we talked more when we were waiting to deplane. But I can never fathom the mindset that it's OK to bother everyone else on the plane with your audio. It's been happening at least once on most planes I've been on lately.
We land on time, Lyft gets us home quickly, we have Taco Bell to celebrate, something I've been craving in my days of feeling crappy.
And my cold has receded to the point where I've clearly on post-cold symptoms at this point ... though the coughing is still pretty horrible, and I worry I might have a fifth day in a row of bad sleep. Perfect timing; welcome home.
(The cats are thrilled to see us.)