Getting to Kauai

Well, we're home from our trip to the beautiful Hawaiian island of Kauai.  That means it's time to share all of my experiences.  I'll get to the good stuff in a future post, but first I thought I'd share the difficult time we had in getting there.  (Don't be confused.  I'm not asking for pity.  This story still ends with me in Hawaii.  Nothing that ends in Hawaii is bad.)

The day started much too early.  I set my alarm for 3 AM.  (I set my alarm.  That's generally against everything I believe in.)

I randomly woke up at 2:45, and wondered whether I should just get up.  The next thing I remember my alarm went off, so I guess that was my decision.

We had planned to leave at 3:30, but we got off a little late at 3:40.  That was fine, though.  We still had plenty of time to grab breakfast and get to our flight.  Especially since our flight was delayed a good 30 minutes.  The reason for the delay?  They said they were changing a light bulb in the lavatory.  I'm no handy man, but I could have changed that light bulb in under 30 minutes.  I mean, I get that it takes a few minutes sometimes.  If it's anything like my house, you have to find a chair to stand on, and then climb up on the chair, and then realize you shouldn't have picked a chair with wheels, and then you find a different chair.  That whole process can take a good 5 minutes, but 30 is definitely pushing it.

Anyway, we finally got on the plane and got in the air.  Our first layover was in Seattle.  I'm not sure how much closer that is to Hawaii, because for every mile you go west, you go north almost just as much.  Our plane landed, and we only had about 20 minutes until they started boarding.  We had to go from the A gates to the S gates.  Robyn was super stressed out because we had to take a train to get there.  I thought a train sounded perfect, because it dropped us off where we needed to be.  I think she was imagining it being like taking a train from Lehi to Salt Lake.

She kept saying, "We'll never make it.  We have to get on a TRAIN!"

The train got us there in just a couple minutes, so we had time to spare while we sat and waited to board.  They got us on the plane, and then we sat on the plane for about an hour.  There's nothing like rushing to get somewhere only to just sit forever.

After about an hour of sitting on the plane, they announced that they couldn't find our pilot so we were all going to deplane.  The words they used were, "We don't know where the pilot is."  I find myself wondering, how do you lose a pilot?  I mean, they didn't say, "Our pilot called in sick" or "Our pilot was in a car accident on the way in."  They said they don't know where he is.

So we had to get off the plane and wait for them to find a pilot.

They gave me free chips to eat while we waited for a pilot.  So there's that.

Eventually, they found a different pilot and let us get back on the plane.  He came over the intercom and let us know that he wasn't the one who didn't show up for work.  They got him out of bed on his day off to fly us to Hawaii.

When we got back on the plane I had to take a selfie with some of my plane mates.  These are the people that will form our society when we crash on an island in the middle of the ocean.

By the time we arrived in Honolulu, they were already boarding our connection to Kauai.  We were supposed to have a 3 hour layover.  It was going to be great.  We would grab a bite to eat and wander around the airport.  (It's a beautiful airport.)

We had to take a shuttle across the airport to find our gate.  We also had to get our boarding pass printed, because this flight was with Hawaiian Airlines, and Delta didn't give us a boarding pass when I printed the others.  No one was working at any of the service desks, so we went and asked the ladies at the gate.  They eventually got them printed, but their computer apparently had no idea who we were.  They asked questions like, "Do you have any infants with you?"  Or "Where did you fly in from?"

But we got it printed and got on the plane.  We sat down with me on the aisle seat and Robyn in the middle.  There was no one in the window seat.  The plane seemed to be completely boarded.  Maybe we would get lucky and have some space to spread out.

No.  There would be no luck today.  I saw a giant man walking down the aisle.  I looked around and realized there were no other seats.  He came to our row and pointed to the window seat.  Robyn and I got to snuggle real close to make room for the giant in the window seat.

But, hey, it was our last flight of the day.  Only 40 minutes to Kauai and then all of our travelling troubles would be over.

Not so.

Our plane landed on Kauai.  We got off the plane and could finally relax knowing we arrived safely and nothing else could go wrong in getting us to our destination.

We went to pick up our bags at the baggage claim, and they weren't there.  What?

It turns out that our short layover where we rushed to the plane was too short for our luggage to make it.  We went to talk to the baggage claim guru, and she said it was very likely that it would be on the next flight in, that came an hour later.  There was a nice family who had also been on the Seattle flight and they had the same problem.  It gave me a little comfort to know that they were in the same boat.  To me that meant it really was an issue of not making the flight, and not an issue of the luggage being lost.

We went and picked up our rental car.  I thought we would be back in 20 minutes or so and have to wait a long time to see if our luggage was there.  Luckily, it was the least efficient rental car facility I've ever seen.  It took about 90 minutes to get our car.  By that time, we drove back to the terminal and our bags were there waiting for us.  The baggage claim guru that we spoke to had gathered them all together, so I just had to thank her and roll them out to the car.  We were on our way.

We grabbed some dinner and drove to our condo.  It took about 40 minutes to get to the north shore.  The first thing I did after bringing everything in was plop on the couch and just look out the window.

The ocean view was beautiful, and I stayed awake just long enough to see the sunset.  Then it was time for sleep because I was more tired than you can possibly imagine.

It was a rough day but it ended in Hawaii, so it was great.

Stay tuned and I'll share some of the adventures we had while we were there.