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…
It’s 7:45 right now. My flight to LA is leaving without me.
Around 9:00 at the gate for the next flight, they’re already asking for volunteers to get bumped. It’s not a good sign. Or at least it should have been – turns out some guy was stuck on the runway at Corpus Christi, Texas, and one seat opened up. Woohoo! I grabbed my stuff and hopped on the plane, seat 39L on the 767-400, a window seat on the right side of the plane several rows behind the wing.
Due to high level winds somewhere in the projected flight path, instead of flying towards LA and then turning south, we head towards the Rio Grande Valley, passing over Laredo into northern Mexico. We’re 31,000 feet above La Paz in Baja California when we pass over the last land until we get to Hawaii. The in-flight entertainment system is pretty cool – several video tracks (movies and tv shows) and audio tracks (various types of music), plus video games. The summer movie “Spider-Man” is the new movie du jour (repeated 3 times). I watched that while eating lunch (chicken and lasagne) and then tried to sleep a bit. I’m not totally sure I was successful. The video system also showed us our current position (via GPS, I’m sure), our flight path so far, and our projected track (which didn’t mean much since that one went through LA instead of Baja), along with altitude, ground speed, local time in Houston and Honolulu, and projected landing time. When we took off, they predicted we’d land at 12:38 pm (5:38 pm Houston time), or around 7 hours and 45 minutes.
Around noon we finally passed over some land, the first in about 6 hours – we’re really here. From my window I can’t see the Big Island of Hawaii but I do see Maui. The water looks brilliantly turquoise. After a short video introduction to the islands, we land. Exactly on time, amazingly, after nearly 8 hours in the air. I was a bit disappointed when no one was at the gate giving leis to everyone as they deplaned. I had seen that enough on tv and the movies that I expected to get one.
But now the big question is what to do with my luggage, since the temporary stowage lockers have all been shut down in the airport security crackdowns. Fortunately I was able to check my luggage at the Qantas desk (about 11 hours early), even being able to leave my carry-on with them too. And with the early early early checkin, I was able to get a window seat in a bulkhead. Lots of leg room!
OK, so what to do in Honolulu with a 12-hour layover? I got some info books and decided to just hang out in Waikiki for the afternoon and evening. I’ll be back in a couple weeks anyway to do the other stuff that I just don’t have time for today. Once I figured out which bus to take (either #19 or 20 east will take you to Waikiki) and figured out when I had to catch it for the trip back to the airport, I was set. Honolulu’s bus system (TheBus) is pretty efficient, but it’s slow if you’re in a hurry. It took me an hour to get from the airport to the beach, which is average. With no real goal in mind except to just wander, I got off at the corner of Saratoga and Kalakaua and took Beachwalk towards the beach. There are a zillion hotels here. I pass one shop that’s a discount broker for hotel rooms, tours, and tickets. Based on what Katalina at Beechman Agencies told me, they get huge volume discounts that they pass along, everything from $10 off a ticket to the “military rate” for a hotel room and car. She pointed out some places in my price range and I’ll look at them during the day and while I’m in Australia, and then send her the info to book a room. I think that’s going to be much easier (and cheaper) in the long run.
Katalina (who’s Italian and says she used to be a model way back when) tells me to head down Kalakaua Ave. towards Diamondhead, that’s where all of the beach hotels (and of course, the beach) are located. Waikiki is crammed with hotels, restaurants, big shops, little shops, and huge malls. For the next 3 hours or so I wandered eastward, checking out the beach (very narrow) and just people watching.
Turns out this week is part of the Aloha Festivals in the islands, and today they had some of the ceremonies with the Royal Court. I found myself down at the Queen’s Surf Beach for Sunset on the Beach, where every Saturday they show free movies on the beach. That sounds pretty cool. Tonight was going to be the premiere of a film about Honolulu firefighters, followed by the Elvis flick “Blue Hawaii”.
I stayed for the sunset and lo and behold, I actually saw the fabled Green Flash. I had seen pictures of it as far back as 8th grade but I had never seen it with my own eyes. If you blinked you missed it – as the last tiny bit of the sun sank below the horizon, the light rays were refracted just a bit and the yellow light shifts in the spectrum to green. Anyway, from there I made my way to the Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant for mai tais and a burger.
There seems to be one of those ABC Stores every block. It’s like a combination of a convenience store and Target, shrunk to fit a small shop. And they’re all packed! I don’t know how or why, but even with the street saturated with the stores, they all seem to do good business.
Around 9 pm I started to hit “the wall”. My body thought it was 3 a.m., and I had been awake since 5:30 this morning. Plus my contacts were starting to bother me, so I decided to call it a night early and head back to the airport, arranging a shuttle with Katalina’s shop at 10. Yes, that’s still 3 hours before the Qantas flight to Sydney leaves, but getting my stuff would allow me to change clothes too, and maybe catch a quick nap.
Everything worked out fine except we had to sit “outside” most of the time – the terminals at Honolulu are all open to the air, so while the temperature is nice, it’s very humid. And my Palm M505, which I had been taking notes on, now won’t reset properly without an error. I could hard reset even though I’d lose everything on it, since I just did a hotsynch last night. The only stuff that would be gone would be today’s notes and expense info, but I pretty much recreated everything just now. And my hotsynch cradle is in my checked luggage, so I couldn’t fix it until tomorrow.
By the time the plane is scheduled for takeoff, I will have been awake for 24-1/2 hours. My September 14th has lasted 29 hours.
(See here for my full Flickr page of my first stay in Honolulu.)
Sunday, September 15: Honolulu to Sydney
The shortest day
At 12:55 they tell us that the flight was delayed getting into Honolulu, so we won’t be taking off until 1:35, a half hour late. Since we’re 10 minutes before departure and nobody has gotten on yet (not even the flight crew), that was obvious.
They had the same kind of moving map as on the Houston-Honolulu leg, but we didn’t have individual screens. The map told us that the flight was 9-1/2 hours and would be 5086 miles. Good thing we’ll be sleeping for most of that.
The plane didn’t take off until 2 a.m., and a late “dinner” was served at 3. I’m not sure what exactly to call that meal, since Sydney time was 11 pm. It was some beef with rice and a black bean sauce – actually pretty tasty for airline food. Went to sleep around 3:30 – that’s 8:30 a.m. Houston time, meaning I’ve been awake for 27 hours. I managed to sleep for about 4-5 hours, but that worked out well for wrenching my body to Sydney time (15 hours ahead, or 9 hours behind). When I woke up I felt like it was morning, so I hope I’ll be OK.
At some point while I was asleep we crossed the International Date Line, so it’s now the 16th. Since I miss the night of the 15th, I miss Kol Nidre services. I’ve made enquiries about some kind of service with the guy who owns the Pacific International Hotel (who's Jewish and was arranging something with the unorganized Jewish population in Cairns), but haven't heard anything yet. If I don't get to email by this afternoon, it's a moot point.
Next: Part 2, Cairns
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