Friday, July 29, 2011

Australia/Hawaii 2002, part 1: Honolulu

Flashback to my "Down Under: World Tour 2002", part 1, wherein I go from Houston to Honolulu to Sydney (IAH - HNL - SYD). In retrospect, reading this seems almost quaint - I had a new digital camera for the first time, and I had my new-ish Palm m505 PDA to take notes on and to keep my calendar straight (and as I found out much later, the m505 problem was caused by a buggy game that I loaded right before I left). Apparently it was the first in-flight entertainment system flight I had taken, too. Except for the stuff I spontaneously did, I did most of my planning for this trip over the internet on my own.

Saturday, September 14, 2002: Houston to Honolulu
The longest day (or: Delayed and De-lei’d)

Well, I’m off to a flying start – pun intended. After a restful 3-1/2 hr sleep, my alarm goes off at 5:30 so I can leave at 6. Which I actually do, surprisingly. On my way to the airport I took a wrong turn (I misremembered how the highways and airport are laid out) and lost nearly a half hour while I backtracked. That got me to the airport check-in line at 7:11, just within the 30-minute check-in rule for a 7:45 flight. Oops, they changed the time of the flight, it’s now at 7:40 so I’m 29 minutes before the flight. And therefore I can’t take that flight. Originally, I was to have left at 7:45 with a 40 minute layover in LA, getting into Honolulu at 12:30 local. Now they’ve got me on standby for the 9:40 direct to Honolulu (gets in at 12:45), and if that doesn’t work, I have to hang around until 11:35 for the next direct flight (gets in at 2:40). If I have to take the later one, at least I have a confirmed aisle seat for the 8-hour flight. Good thing Continental has a hub in Houston with so many flights out to Honolulu. Scratch one flight segment from my pre-trip estimate of 14…

Flashback: 2002 Australia & Hawaii trip report

In 2002, I got a bigger than normal income tax refund for some reason, so I decided to take a bigger than normal vacation with the money, and I planned a trip to Australia. I loved the accent and it was the farthest place I could go in the world away from my home. In 2002, the internet (as the public used it) and in particular the web was only about 5 years old, so booking international travel by the consumer was still relatively new. I ended up emailing people and companies to send me paper brochures to look through.

How to find someone in the 1940 Census

I posted this on Facebook in April 2012, not long after the 1940 Census was released. I rediscovered this post in November 2020 and figured ...