Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Hawaii Day 8 – In Which We Say Goodbye to the Surfboard, and Say Hello to the Sun.

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Our last day on Kauai was bittersweet. I do love it there, and there is something to be said for returning to the same place to really gain a sense for how a place changes, and stays the same, over the years.

It’s too bad it rained almost the entire time we were on Kauai, but we still managed to have a great time. Kauai has a laid back, end-of-the-world feel to it that is intoxicating and although it was one of our wettest visits ever, I still felt sad about leaving.

It was raining like crazy when we packed up the cars to head to the airport, but we still had one thing to do before we left. Jacob’s awesome thrift store surfboard had served him well, but was too big to take on the plane, and to expensive to ship home. So we decided to do a little pay-it-forward experiment, and sharpie a message onto it, then leave the board at the beach, with the hopes that someone who wanted/needed it would have the chance to use it while they were on Kauai, then pass it on to someone else.

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Nice work, Jacob.

He also put our email address on the board and wrote ‘send me some pics’. It would be really great to actually get a picture from some happy soul.

We left our place a little late and of course the weather was terrible and we got stuck behind a Kauai slowpoke. Traffic on this little island is outrageously bad, but we thought we might be OK at 11am. We were definitely wrong about that and at one point, wondered if we would even make our 1pm flight to Honolulu.

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When we finally arrived at the airport at 12:20 pm it was a huge rush to drop off the rental cars and get checked in. We were a sweaty bunch when we were finally all in line. A very long line. We were flying Go! airlines and the line up for the 1pm flight was extremely long. We grew increasingly anxious and fretful until the woman in line behind us casually informed us that Go! Airlines was actually more commonly known in these parts as No Go! Airlines and that it was likely the flight would be at least delayed, if not cancelled. She was a regular interisland flyer and this was her experience. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than a message flashed up on the screen beside our flight informing us it had been delayed to 2:20pm.

Several people in line ahead of us would now miss their connections, stomped off swearing. One woman beside me angrily declared this to be ‘THE FIRST AND LAST TIME’ she would ever fly with Go!

And so we waited and moved our bags .06 of an inch at a time until we were finally able to check in. Then it was off to the equally long line at security. I am very pleased to be able to announce here that we found the leftover New Year’s firecracker in Zoe’s pocket BEFORE we went through security. Yep.

We finally made it to the gate and sat, and sat, and sat, as the flight was delayed and delayed and delayed. It seems that time really does slow down here, and it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you’re always on Kauai time.


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Eventually the flight took off, with us on it, but only because I finally, in the absence of any announcement, went up to the desk and asked if they were boarding our flight yet.

Me: Are you boarding flight 1051 yet? We’ve been waiting forever…

Rachelle: 1051? Go! 1051?

Me: Yes…

Rachelle: They are on final call for flight 1051. It’s almost ready for take off.

Me: Well was someone going to tell us that?

Rachelle: It was announced several times.

Me: Is no one curious why the plane is empty? I think we’re all sitting here waiting. Have been since 1pm as a matter of fact. But no rush really…

Rachelle: Like I said, it’s final call so please have your boarding passes ready and proceed through gate 7a to…

Me: yes yes…

Single mom behind me: Are you going to announce flight 1051 for boarding soon?

Me: See?!

Rachelle: Ma’am it’s final call for…

Single mom: What?!! SARAH, MATTHEW, GET OUR BAGS! NOW!I’m NEVER flying GO! again.

Me: It’s more like GO! figure it all out yourself! or GO! wait over there for 5 hours or GO! find another airline.

Rachelle: Please proceed to ga…

The flight was mercifully short, if held together with paperclips,

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and we were soon in Honolulu. We high-tailed it out of there and called a cab to take us to our hotel. We were pleasantly surprised when a huge limo showed up.

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This was a far cry from our last hours in Kauai: the sun was out and we were in a limo, and it was all good.

Next up: Our sweet Hawaii 5-0 condo.

Thanks for reading,

Cheers,

Jane

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