And we left Hawaii for the Mainland in the dead of winter. Crazy, eh?
We arrived at the condo after freezing for a couple of days in San Francisco. It's even more freezing here. Ugh.
What a trip. We traveled all over Peru without a single hitch, except for all of us getting sick, but we were prepared for that and it did not hinder us much. So you wouldn't think taking one of our routine journeys from Hilo to SF to Seattle would be a problem. Wrong.
We made it out the door OK, and as usual leaving from Hilo's small airport was a snap. We got to Honolulu at lunchtime. Terry carried our tray loaded with chicken, pork, rice, corn , mac salad and a couple of glasses of water to our table, stumbled, and dumped half of it all over the place. We ate what was left. Ugh. It turned out he had forgotten to eat breakfast and was barely functional.
Oh well, we would be on our way soon, and who are we to complain when others are starving and/or being shot at in so many places? After all, flying is a luxury. Anyhow, we learned that the flight, scheduled for 3:15, had been re-scheduled to 5:00. One of the engines was having problems. A crew would get right on it. I took a vid of the ground crew checking things out. It looked as if it had been filmed in slow motion. They were debating whether to send a plane or repair the buggah. It might have been faster to send a plane, but they didn't. We got underway at midnight.
Luckily, I had my Kindle Fire and had downloaded JFK to keep me entertained. *Terry watched about half of it but found it "too depressing." He slept. I never can sleep in these situations but luckily had some nice music on my I-pod. Terpsicore Dances by Pretorius! Of all things. And I read a few newspapers on the Kindle reader. Others in what they refer to as the "holding area" were also sleeping or using various electronic devices to pacify themselves during this long, long wait.
Arriving in the early a.m. we were glad our room had been pre-paid and we could get into it immediately. Terry had to go right to a meeting.
Coming up to Seattle was OK except for the poor little kid on the plane who kept yelling, "I want to get DOWN!" for about an hour. He has not yet resigned himself as we big people have to the indignities of air travel.
On this short flight I watched a Charlie Rose interview with Oliver Stone from 1996. The way "respectable," "mainstream" liberal media people like Rose treat Stone is instructive. They act like he is some kind of paranoid flake and a Hollywood sellout. Charlie Rose kept playing "gotcha" with him about some of his dramatizations of historical events. Well, as Stone says, and he does not bother to be modest, you could say the same thing about Shakespeare.
I have some nice photos, which I will post later. Management has had to put security restrictions on the computer I'm using here at the condo business center. But I'm glad it works as well as it does.
*I LOVE Kindle download videos on my Kindle Fire. It's a great service. I had JFK, a Frontline documentary, and two Charlie Rose interviews to keep me from going mad on this trip. They are very inexpensive to rent or buy.
That sort of unexpected flight delay can be very frustrating. Unfortunately, living in Hawaii is tantamount to flying some of the time. There is a direct Alaska Airlines flight from Honolulu to Bellingham which makes my own life easier. However, it is a "red eye" so one arrives there without much sleep. The flight back is a cinch with virtually no jet lag. When I left a week ago, it was very wintry. It's hard to imagine, sitting here in Hawaii, where it was "freezing" this morning but slowly getting warmer. I'm wearing long pants and a flannel shirt, not my usual uniform. If you bump into the Renaissance Bar, my grnsddaughter, Gina Bozzo, is the bartender there. She leads the tattered-at-the-knees blue jeans, tattooed life of a UDub student.
Posted by: Henry Hank Chapin | January 16, 2013 at 01:37 PM
It seems that the West got slammed with cold weather. 0 degrees in SLC a couple of days ago. We in KY are having a chill and some ice which will disappear by Friday. All and all I feel that this is winter and normal -- barbara
Posted by: barbara | January 16, 2013 at 02:40 PM
I seem to be losing my resilience. Can't tolerate cold weather as I once did.
Posted by: Hattie | January 16, 2013 at 03:21 PM
What an adventure, Hattie! glad you had enough to chew on for the looooong trip.
I notice lately that my cold intolerance has hit like nothing before. A shock. A vest in the HOUSE? Yeah that's me now.
XO
WWW
Posted by: wisewebwoman | January 16, 2013 at 04:30 PM