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Oahu, Day Four: Coming Home
Jun. 18th, 2020 05:32 pmWe were surprised how people on Oahu referred to Kauai as "The Country", but four days later, it's obvious that we've very quickly become the simple country folk who are disgusted by the city ways.
Not that we didn't enjoy the amenities.
To start with, despite the gray, threatening weather this morning, I walked down to Ala Moana Beach for a swim.
It was rather joyous to get there before 8am and to dive into the water.
And Ala Moana's very nice. A wide beach, a considerable shallow area, and water that was as smooth as glass.
Lots of folks were standing far out in that shallow water, up to their chest, like aquatic statuary.
I used to often go out for a morning swim on our first visit to Hawaii, 'lo these 19 years ago, so it was great to do that again, even if it was just on this last day.
This trip to Oahu made me really happy that we moved to Kauai before this pandemic broke, because I'd be miserable back in Berkeley. Having to walk around to get errands done, and wear a mask the whole time (in the hot sun), that was a whole different level of discomfort and intrusiveness from having to put on a mask when getting out of a car.
And one more time we enjoyed the many cuisines within walking distance of our hotel. For lunch, we had some sandwiches (and wraps) from a tasty, frou-frou sandwich place.
But, ah, when we got to Honolulu airport, that was chaos, just like the one other time we'd entered that airport from the city.
I mean using the electronic terminals to check-in was OK, and THAT was chaos last time through Honolulu, because they don't have enough of them. But they're running at maybe 10% capacity now.
But the chaos started when we tried to get to the gates, and found the lines all warped dramatically out of shape, to push you through the new interisland-travel bureaucrats, who help you fill out pretty worthless forms, saying where you're going and that you don't have COVID symptoms. It took about 10 minutes, and I just can't imagine how messed up that's going to be when Honolulu ramps up.
(You can fill out the forms ahead of time, well we couldn't because they didn't have them ready when we left for Oahu, but we know 50-80% of people won't.)
And then we got pushed into the TSA line which was even more of a mess because they were mixing TSA and TSA-Pre together somewhat haphazardly. And so they were making us do thinks like take our computers out of our bags, which we weren't set up to do, because, y'know, TSA-Pre.
They let Kimberly wear her shoes and go through the metal detector, but then claimed that I didn't have TSA-Pre, I think because the incompetent TSA agent at the machines didn't know how to read the cryptically printed boarding passes from the kiosks. (But I know they said TSA, both because the kiosk had told me so, and because Kimberly's was recognized by her first TSA agent.) So there was more tomfoolery as they made the plane safer by requiring me to take off my shoes.
(That DOESN'T make the plane any safer.)
I was pretty pissed by the time I got through the worthless forms and worthless TSA agents gauntlet.
But I really decided I was done with Honolulu not because of that but because of the experience at the gate.
We sat down in the corner, to try and keep as few people from passing by us as possible, and quickly realized the guy closest to us wasn't wearing a mask. And then a group of a half-dozen twenty-somethings sat down just past him, and started yelling to each other at their lungs. And they weren't wearing masks either, which means they were projecting whatever germs they had to everyone within a twenty or thirty foot radius.
So we moved. And the mom-or-sister playing with a baby near our seat soon took of her mask so that she could smooch the baby, and ....
I know there isn't a lot of COVID on the islands. I hate wearing those damned masks. But airports and airplanes are among the most crowded places we're allowed to go right now, and it's just pure sociopathy to show so little disregard for the health of the others in that tight, confined space by not wearing a mask.
(Though Hawaiian wasn't doing crap about patrolling the terminal, as they should have been, since we and many others were pretty much trapped there; at least they seemed to keep all the little brats masked on the plane.)
And I say this is about Honolulu because that's pretty much the attitude I saw in wandering the city. Some large percentage of the population just didn't care about protecting everyone else.
It was all about their own selfish city ways.
But, it could be anywhere, not just Honolulu. As we boarded the plane we saw a little jerk from San Francisco badgering the guy admitting everyone to the plane to try and get an earlier flight, since his connection wasn't until five hours later. (As I said yesterday: we don't have enough interisland flights right now.) The attendant finally told him: "I have to get these people boarded first."
We eventually discovered there were at least two empty seats on the flight (right across from us: the other higher-priced exit-row seats). The jerk from SF didn't get either of them.
(As Kimberly later said: "He sure seemed eager to get to Kauai and begin his 14-day quarantine". Hopefully we'll see a record of his arrest in the next few days, because he didn't seem the type of person intending to follow the laws about our 14-day-quarantine for people coming from the mainland.)
The flight was uneventful, other than the fact that we were again required to "show our papers" in Lihue, which created an awful traffic jam getting out of the terminal.
I have no idea what the point was here. We showed our boarding passes (though no one had said to keep them, and I know I often throw those away) and our IDs. Maybe there would have been more scrutiny if we hadn't had Hawaiian IDs, but we certainly didn't show them anything that proved we hadn't come from the mainland.
There is so much Security Theatre that it's painful, and sadly people keep falling for it again and again.
Did you know that 50% of people are of below-average intelligence? True story.
We played the car shell-game one last time upon our return.
My dad and Mary had driven one of their cars and Julie the Benz out to the airport, my dad pulled Julie up the curb, hopped out and walked back to their car, and then we hopped into Julie and drove off.
Actually, I made sure to drive off after them, because we'd been given little green placards to turn in at the national guard roadblock leaving the airport, and they hadn't and I wanted to make sure there was no problem.
But, no problem. They must have just driven through, because they were gone by the time we got to the roadblock. The guards let us through after just turning in our placards and answering the question, "Is there anyone else, or just you two" and we said "Just us".
Security theatre.
We are going to be staying away from my folks for at least the week, after spending time not just on Oahu, the disease capital of Hawaii, but also in an airport full of sociopaths and scofflaws. And if I was doing anything else in close contact with other people, I wouldn't. (But, really not right now.)
But we're not totally self-isolating, because we don't have to and we don't see the need to. I think we're all happy with the minimal level of danger that we present with our unlikelihood of having COVID multiplied by the unlikelihood of it transmitting in casual circumstances.
So we did go to Costco on the way home, and used that to refill the refrigerator that we'd mostly emptied before we left.
And now we're home.
Not that we didn't enjoy the amenities.
To start with, despite the gray, threatening weather this morning, I walked down to Ala Moana Beach for a swim.
It was rather joyous to get there before 8am and to dive into the water.
And Ala Moana's very nice. A wide beach, a considerable shallow area, and water that was as smooth as glass.
Lots of folks were standing far out in that shallow water, up to their chest, like aquatic statuary.
I used to often go out for a morning swim on our first visit to Hawaii, 'lo these 19 years ago, so it was great to do that again, even if it was just on this last day.
This trip to Oahu made me really happy that we moved to Kauai before this pandemic broke, because I'd be miserable back in Berkeley. Having to walk around to get errands done, and wear a mask the whole time (in the hot sun), that was a whole different level of discomfort and intrusiveness from having to put on a mask when getting out of a car.
And one more time we enjoyed the many cuisines within walking distance of our hotel. For lunch, we had some sandwiches (and wraps) from a tasty, frou-frou sandwich place.
But, ah, when we got to Honolulu airport, that was chaos, just like the one other time we'd entered that airport from the city.
I mean using the electronic terminals to check-in was OK, and THAT was chaos last time through Honolulu, because they don't have enough of them. But they're running at maybe 10% capacity now.
But the chaos started when we tried to get to the gates, and found the lines all warped dramatically out of shape, to push you through the new interisland-travel bureaucrats, who help you fill out pretty worthless forms, saying where you're going and that you don't have COVID symptoms. It took about 10 minutes, and I just can't imagine how messed up that's going to be when Honolulu ramps up.
(You can fill out the forms ahead of time, well we couldn't because they didn't have them ready when we left for Oahu, but we know 50-80% of people won't.)
And then we got pushed into the TSA line which was even more of a mess because they were mixing TSA and TSA-Pre together somewhat haphazardly. And so they were making us do thinks like take our computers out of our bags, which we weren't set up to do, because, y'know, TSA-Pre.
They let Kimberly wear her shoes and go through the metal detector, but then claimed that I didn't have TSA-Pre, I think because the incompetent TSA agent at the machines didn't know how to read the cryptically printed boarding passes from the kiosks. (But I know they said TSA, both because the kiosk had told me so, and because Kimberly's was recognized by her first TSA agent.) So there was more tomfoolery as they made the plane safer by requiring me to take off my shoes.
(That DOESN'T make the plane any safer.)
I was pretty pissed by the time I got through the worthless forms and worthless TSA agents gauntlet.
But I really decided I was done with Honolulu not because of that but because of the experience at the gate.
We sat down in the corner, to try and keep as few people from passing by us as possible, and quickly realized the guy closest to us wasn't wearing a mask. And then a group of a half-dozen twenty-somethings sat down just past him, and started yelling to each other at their lungs. And they weren't wearing masks either, which means they were projecting whatever germs they had to everyone within a twenty or thirty foot radius.
So we moved. And the mom-or-sister playing with a baby near our seat soon took of her mask so that she could smooch the baby, and ....
I know there isn't a lot of COVID on the islands. I hate wearing those damned masks. But airports and airplanes are among the most crowded places we're allowed to go right now, and it's just pure sociopathy to show so little disregard for the health of the others in that tight, confined space by not wearing a mask.
(Though Hawaiian wasn't doing crap about patrolling the terminal, as they should have been, since we and many others were pretty much trapped there; at least they seemed to keep all the little brats masked on the plane.)
And I say this is about Honolulu because that's pretty much the attitude I saw in wandering the city. Some large percentage of the population just didn't care about protecting everyone else.
It was all about their own selfish city ways.
But, it could be anywhere, not just Honolulu. As we boarded the plane we saw a little jerk from San Francisco badgering the guy admitting everyone to the plane to try and get an earlier flight, since his connection wasn't until five hours later. (As I said yesterday: we don't have enough interisland flights right now.) The attendant finally told him: "I have to get these people boarded first."
We eventually discovered there were at least two empty seats on the flight (right across from us: the other higher-priced exit-row seats). The jerk from SF didn't get either of them.
(As Kimberly later said: "He sure seemed eager to get to Kauai and begin his 14-day quarantine". Hopefully we'll see a record of his arrest in the next few days, because he didn't seem the type of person intending to follow the laws about our 14-day-quarantine for people coming from the mainland.)
The flight was uneventful, other than the fact that we were again required to "show our papers" in Lihue, which created an awful traffic jam getting out of the terminal.
I have no idea what the point was here. We showed our boarding passes (though no one had said to keep them, and I know I often throw those away) and our IDs. Maybe there would have been more scrutiny if we hadn't had Hawaiian IDs, but we certainly didn't show them anything that proved we hadn't come from the mainland.
There is so much Security Theatre that it's painful, and sadly people keep falling for it again and again.
Did you know that 50% of people are of below-average intelligence? True story.
We played the car shell-game one last time upon our return.
My dad and Mary had driven one of their cars and Julie the Benz out to the airport, my dad pulled Julie up the curb, hopped out and walked back to their car, and then we hopped into Julie and drove off.
Actually, I made sure to drive off after them, because we'd been given little green placards to turn in at the national guard roadblock leaving the airport, and they hadn't and I wanted to make sure there was no problem.
But, no problem. They must have just driven through, because they were gone by the time we got to the roadblock. The guards let us through after just turning in our placards and answering the question, "Is there anyone else, or just you two" and we said "Just us".
Security theatre.
We are going to be staying away from my folks for at least the week, after spending time not just on Oahu, the disease capital of Hawaii, but also in an airport full of sociopaths and scofflaws. And if I was doing anything else in close contact with other people, I wouldn't. (But, really not right now.)
But we're not totally self-isolating, because we don't have to and we don't see the need to. I think we're all happy with the minimal level of danger that we present with our unlikelihood of having COVID multiplied by the unlikelihood of it transmitting in casual circumstances.
So we did go to Costco on the way home, and used that to refill the refrigerator that we'd mostly emptied before we left.
And now we're home.