In Which I Holiday
Dec. 23rd, 2023 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_a_Yesterday, we set off for the Bay Area for the holidays._
SNEAKER ALERT! At Lihue Airport yesterday, the TSA seemed to be giving extra attention to footware. I get randomly selected for a footware check, which involves me stepping to the side and them wiping down my sneakers and then putting the wiper into a bomb detector. No problem, since I have TSA-Pre. My shoes were on my feet, and I was not required to remove them. The guy two behind me got flagged too, and since he didn't have TSA-Pre, he had to wait for his shoes before he can bring them back to the TSA agent. I've never before seen checks specifically on shoes, not even in Mad Shoe Bomber days. Was there a shoe threat reported yesterday morning? And why were extra checks required on shoes that had just gone through the x-ray machine?
CLOWN CARS. The planes were _crowded_ yesterday. Yeah, I'm sure that's true all over the country, but flying out of Hawaii just before the holidays and back just after, we're often avoiding the biggest crowds by running contraflow. Not yesterday. As our plane arrived and we watch it deplane there were huge numbers of people getting off. Then there was a big gap and I thought they must be done, then at least as many people get off again. I thought of clown cars at the circus.
We got to watch this phenomenon again and again over the course of the day as we were constantly first-on/last-off due to Kimberly's ailing knee.
ALMOST, BUT NO CIGAR. I long for the old Hawaiian airplanes that were laid out with their seats 2-3-2, meaning that you had two seats near the bulkheads, then aisles, then three in the middle. Unfortunately, they stopped being used right around COVID, replaced with smaller 3-3 planes. That means that you can no longer fly off the islands and have two seats to yourselves unless you fly first class (and there were no first class seats available for the trip out). Which is a bummer in this age of COVID, especially when disease is rising during the holidays.
Nonetheless, I always do my best to game my seats. So I'll always choose two seats in a row where the third seat isn't taken yet, and I'll even switch seats at the last minute if that third seat has been taken and there's another row where it hasn't. Heading into this flight, the third seat in our row was empty, and it being an "extra comfort" seat, I had some hope it wouldn't be filled at the last minute. Well, all the early group numbers boarded, and that usually would have included the extra-comfort seats, and no one filled or seat. Then another 10 or 15 minutes went by as more people slowly entered the clown car, and the seat stayed empty. Would we be lucky despite the extremely full flights?
I could see the very, very last person on the plane queueing up down the aisle, with the bulkhead doors closed behind her. And ... she dropped her backpack in that third seat next to us before heading rearward to try and find someplace for her carry on.
Alas!
MASK ALERT. Hawaiian Airlines has pre-recorded their emergency instructions for many years. The ones that you get at the start of a trip. I noticed when we flew yesterday that after the prerecorded message, they then had a spiel that they did live about how if the oxygen masks drop and you're wearing a face covering you should take that off before putting putting on your oxygen mask. And I thought: they haven't updated their prerecorded emergency info since the pandemic.
INTERESTING TIMES. Our seatmate seemed perfectly nice, meaning she didn't try to talk to us, but also pretty weird. I think she just gave no f***s.
But she had earphones in most of the flight and was frequently shaking her head and moving her lips along to the song.
She puts on about seven layers of clothes after boarding the plane, most notably standing in the aisle to pull on a pair of pants.
When she ate her meal, a gentrified hot pocket, she ripped off all the outer bread and just ate the inner bits. Apparently the more cooked bread wasn't as good.
At one point she caused me and Kimberly great concern when she seems to fall asleep with her elbow on her tray table and a cup of coffee lifted up in the air.
We exchanged a few pleasantries when we were landing. She took a bazillion pictures of San Jose's lights as we landed, and seemed pretty entranced by them, so hopefully a great time in the city.
AIRPORT RACE. Landing at San Jose, Kimberly had another wheelchair, which took her to our luggage pickup. The lady wheeling her RACED. I had to hustle to keep up! (Good exercise after five or six hours on a plane.)
FIRST & LAST. We had a weird first and last day. We were literally the first people on the plane to San Jose because Kimberly was in a wheel chair. Then our seatmate was literally the last person on the plane. Then, picking up our luggage, we were literally the last people out of the Luggage Chamber. Ah well, our plane arrived about 30 minutes early. And there was the mad airport rush.
_Today was our first day of holiday, and we made the most of it, not only with lots of great eating, but lots of stuff too._
PICKLEBALL. My mom and Bob have been playing pickleball for six months or so (and were both variously injured from it when I was out in September). So we went out to play pickleball today, along with my brother J. First time pickleballer here, lots of fun. It felt a lot like Ping Pong to me, but obviously more athletic. More Ping Pong than Tennis, though I don't think I've played Tennis since High School. I mostly figured out the serving and got into the play. Not particularly good, but competent. I played two games alongside Bob, two alongside my mom, and one with another player at the court. (The community there seemed great). All around, a good time. After five games, I decided I should stop because my ankle I hurt in September was twinging and that hamstring had also gotten really tight.
But I'm thinking about picking up a pickleball paddle for Christmas, as it looks like they play at the tennis courts about a mile from us, on the mauka side of Kalaheo. Both the exercise and the community would be very welcome, and those courts are really close.
ADAM. After we got home, we watch _The Adam Project_ on Netflix. I love a good time travel movie, and this was a good time travel movie. It wasn't that it had clever timey wimey paradoxes (which I love). Oh, there was some attention to how paradoxes worked. But the movie was great because it visited some of the same people from different time periods, and it was super charming in doing so.
CASCADIA. We closed out the day with some Cascadia. Always fun, though I crashed & burned for my second game in a row. Oddly that's the two games we've played since we pulled in the tiles from the Landmarks supplement. Huh.
_So a first full day of vacation ends, and I feel somewhat lighter. Obviously, K. is still having serious problems with her knee, and is in mucho pain, but just relaxing with family who are taking care of us is great after a hard, hard year._
SNEAKER ALERT! At Lihue Airport yesterday, the TSA seemed to be giving extra attention to footware. I get randomly selected for a footware check, which involves me stepping to the side and them wiping down my sneakers and then putting the wiper into a bomb detector. No problem, since I have TSA-Pre. My shoes were on my feet, and I was not required to remove them. The guy two behind me got flagged too, and since he didn't have TSA-Pre, he had to wait for his shoes before he can bring them back to the TSA agent. I've never before seen checks specifically on shoes, not even in Mad Shoe Bomber days. Was there a shoe threat reported yesterday morning? And why were extra checks required on shoes that had just gone through the x-ray machine?
CLOWN CARS. The planes were _crowded_ yesterday. Yeah, I'm sure that's true all over the country, but flying out of Hawaii just before the holidays and back just after, we're often avoiding the biggest crowds by running contraflow. Not yesterday. As our plane arrived and we watch it deplane there were huge numbers of people getting off. Then there was a big gap and I thought they must be done, then at least as many people get off again. I thought of clown cars at the circus.
We got to watch this phenomenon again and again over the course of the day as we were constantly first-on/last-off due to Kimberly's ailing knee.
ALMOST, BUT NO CIGAR. I long for the old Hawaiian airplanes that were laid out with their seats 2-3-2, meaning that you had two seats near the bulkheads, then aisles, then three in the middle. Unfortunately, they stopped being used right around COVID, replaced with smaller 3-3 planes. That means that you can no longer fly off the islands and have two seats to yourselves unless you fly first class (and there were no first class seats available for the trip out). Which is a bummer in this age of COVID, especially when disease is rising during the holidays.
Nonetheless, I always do my best to game my seats. So I'll always choose two seats in a row where the third seat isn't taken yet, and I'll even switch seats at the last minute if that third seat has been taken and there's another row where it hasn't. Heading into this flight, the third seat in our row was empty, and it being an "extra comfort" seat, I had some hope it wouldn't be filled at the last minute. Well, all the early group numbers boarded, and that usually would have included the extra-comfort seats, and no one filled or seat. Then another 10 or 15 minutes went by as more people slowly entered the clown car, and the seat stayed empty. Would we be lucky despite the extremely full flights?
I could see the very, very last person on the plane queueing up down the aisle, with the bulkhead doors closed behind her. And ... she dropped her backpack in that third seat next to us before heading rearward to try and find someplace for her carry on.
Alas!
MASK ALERT. Hawaiian Airlines has pre-recorded their emergency instructions for many years. The ones that you get at the start of a trip. I noticed when we flew yesterday that after the prerecorded message, they then had a spiel that they did live about how if the oxygen masks drop and you're wearing a face covering you should take that off before putting putting on your oxygen mask. And I thought: they haven't updated their prerecorded emergency info since the pandemic.
INTERESTING TIMES. Our seatmate seemed perfectly nice, meaning she didn't try to talk to us, but also pretty weird. I think she just gave no f***s.
But she had earphones in most of the flight and was frequently shaking her head and moving her lips along to the song.
She puts on about seven layers of clothes after boarding the plane, most notably standing in the aisle to pull on a pair of pants.
When she ate her meal, a gentrified hot pocket, she ripped off all the outer bread and just ate the inner bits. Apparently the more cooked bread wasn't as good.
At one point she caused me and Kimberly great concern when she seems to fall asleep with her elbow on her tray table and a cup of coffee lifted up in the air.
We exchanged a few pleasantries when we were landing. She took a bazillion pictures of San Jose's lights as we landed, and seemed pretty entranced by them, so hopefully a great time in the city.
AIRPORT RACE. Landing at San Jose, Kimberly had another wheelchair, which took her to our luggage pickup. The lady wheeling her RACED. I had to hustle to keep up! (Good exercise after five or six hours on a plane.)
FIRST & LAST. We had a weird first and last day. We were literally the first people on the plane to San Jose because Kimberly was in a wheel chair. Then our seatmate was literally the last person on the plane. Then, picking up our luggage, we were literally the last people out of the Luggage Chamber. Ah well, our plane arrived about 30 minutes early. And there was the mad airport rush.
_Today was our first day of holiday, and we made the most of it, not only with lots of great eating, but lots of stuff too._
PICKLEBALL. My mom and Bob have been playing pickleball for six months or so (and were both variously injured from it when I was out in September). So we went out to play pickleball today, along with my brother J. First time pickleballer here, lots of fun. It felt a lot like Ping Pong to me, but obviously more athletic. More Ping Pong than Tennis, though I don't think I've played Tennis since High School. I mostly figured out the serving and got into the play. Not particularly good, but competent. I played two games alongside Bob, two alongside my mom, and one with another player at the court. (The community there seemed great). All around, a good time. After five games, I decided I should stop because my ankle I hurt in September was twinging and that hamstring had also gotten really tight.
But I'm thinking about picking up a pickleball paddle for Christmas, as it looks like they play at the tennis courts about a mile from us, on the mauka side of Kalaheo. Both the exercise and the community would be very welcome, and those courts are really close.
ADAM. After we got home, we watch _The Adam Project_ on Netflix. I love a good time travel movie, and this was a good time travel movie. It wasn't that it had clever timey wimey paradoxes (which I love). Oh, there was some attention to how paradoxes worked. But the movie was great because it visited some of the same people from different time periods, and it was super charming in doing so.
CASCADIA. We closed out the day with some Cascadia. Always fun, though I crashed & burned for my second game in a row. Oddly that's the two games we've played since we pulled in the tiles from the Landmarks supplement. Huh.
_So a first full day of vacation ends, and I feel somewhat lighter. Obviously, K. is still having serious problems with her knee, and is in mucho pain, but just relaxing with family who are taking care of us is great after a hard, hard year._