It seems that the countdown days to our departure seemed to crawl up to the final day. We spent most of the last day doing all the small things that had to be done, clean the house, yard work, even had time to give Taz a nice bath. We opted to stay in and have dinner rather than going out. Taz knew we were leaving as he looked at us with such sad brown puppy eye's that just starred at you. Austin wanted to take him along with us. We set the alarm for 5:30 A.M. our flight was scheduled to leave at 7:50 A.M. Finally out the door at 6:30A.M. We arrived at the airport close to 6:55 A.M. You wouldn't think that at this time the lines would be so long. Along with the 4 fish boxes, dive bag and suitcase, we were really weighted down. My worst fears of having to pay extra $$ for the extra weight came true.
The line at the security check point was long, at least a 30 minute wait. It's 7:30 A.M. now and no sign of Sharon or Austin who went to pack the car. Finally I see them in the distance and they work thier way towards me. I headed for the security check point to get in line. After waiting in line for about 5 minutes the Delta rep came to us and said come with me, they brought us up to the front of the line since we were really running late. And also, because she ended up milking us for big bucks for the supposedly "extra weight" in the boxes. Just like that we were on the train to the gate. I even happened to get my oxygen tank on the plane without a problem. What a relief. I'll leave it in a locker in Honolulu inside the airport overnight so I won't have to deal with the security again. Unfortunately, they could not transfer our luggage for our connecting flight due to the time in between flight. That's a bummer which means we have to take it to the hotel and recheck in again tomorrow. Sharon still does not know where we are going.
We arrived at gate 84 and proceeded right on the plane. Business class, what a nice suprise for Sharon and Austin. We are off to Salt Lake City where we will change planes and head to Honolulu. The flight time to Salt lake City is 4 hours and 35 minutes. Once settled in, we sat back and had breakfast. Cereal, muffin, yogurt, mixed fruit, milk and juice. Austin had 2 bowls of cereal and my banana, I had mine without milk. The new Bose Quiet Comfort headphones are great. They really do block out all the noise so you can actually listen to music without all the outside interference. I do notice that it does make my Tinnitus a little worse. Austin bought a new Pokeman game for his Game boy about 4 weeks ago. He could not open it until we were on the plane so he has been very busy playing away. After breakfast Sharon and I watched a movie called "Bend It Like Beckman." It was a cute movie about two 16 years old girls who would rather play soccer than cook or follow the ways of there parents upbringing. This was not the original flight that we were scheduled on, last month Delta decided to cancel our original flight that would have left Orlando at 4:35 P.M. direct to LAX, where we would catch a late night flight to Honolulu. With that flight, our luggage would have been transfer with out a problem. As I look outside it seems we are flying over Colorado now. There is still snow on a lot of the mountain tops. I believe the pilot said we would be flying over the North West corner of the state towards the Wyoming border. We miss Denver. We have still talked about moving back there. Maybe I'll win the lottery!! Yea right! On the other side of the mountains there are a series of round green circles. They look like pastures but are all round. I counted about 35 in one direction, and at this altitude they look about 6 inches in diameter. The area around the circles are all brown, maybe they are Christmas tree farms. The look so perfectly round. Or maybe they are a secret experiment and are actually spelling something out to aliens in space.
We are slowing starting out decent into Salt Lake City. The flight has been real smooth so far. There are single winding roads that run thru the mountain side, you wonder if any body lives around there as I really can't see any houses, just roads. We all hope to have time to go to Pearl Harbor in the morning. We'll have to be there at the crack of dawn. Sharon has been busy typing away on her computer, no doubt writing something totally different than I am doing. Her battery just died. There is not a port to charge the battery on this plane at your seat so we'll have to charge them once we arrive in Salt Lake City before our next flight. I hope the next plane has a port. After landing we have a hour layover until our flight leaves for Honolulu. We flew right in between mountain on our approach into Salt Lake City , as if there was a path cut out of the mountains. We saw the great salt beds river which was about half of it very dry from the drought. It was pure white. We departed and luckily only had to walk down 4 gates to our next plane.
We found a seat and plugged the laptops in to charge the battery, Austin found an outlet to charge his Game Boy. We sat around and shot the breeze and people watched. The weather look just delightful. Not a cloud in the sky. Soon it was time to board and we found our seats, 4 A,B,C business class again. We are now in a 767-400. I am a little disappointed in the seats, although they are a little wider, for some reason they don't seem as big as United or Air New Zealand. If you were sitting in coach, you had to pick up a bag that had your lunch in it before you got on the plane. The airlines have really cut back there service. We took 3 anyway even though we were going to get served a lunch. We taxied out to the runway and sat there for about 12 minutes waiting for the take off clearance. Once airborne, we were served a lunch that wasn't that bad, a roast beef and cheese sand which, salsa, chips and a brownie. The sandwhich was rolled in a Mexican tortilla bread. I didn't have any of the salsa, although Sharon used it to dip her sandwhich in. We watched a couple of movies on the flight, the 1st one was "Head of State then Bringing Down the House" with Steve Martin. It was relaxing a a way to pass on the hours of flight. The flight time is just a little over 6 hours to Honolulu. My butt is sore. My back hurts from sitting. I can't wait to land. It's now 7:18 P.M. at home and I am wondering what Taz is doing now. We miss him all ready. We arrive in Honolulu at 2:10 P.M. so we will have time to go to the pool and relax. I'm sure the jet lag will catch up with us later on.
We have about another 45 minutes before we will be landing. There is not much to report since I last wrote, on the TV screens that are at your seat, they show a flight map of where the airplane is and the speed and altitude. We are now at 35,000 feet, the air speed is 515 MPH, the outside air temperature is a -54 degrees and there is a 35 MPH head wind, which is not good because that's slowing the plane down. Screen shows 214 miles to go, which would be another 20 minutes of flying but with the head wind, another 38 minutes. So I'll end now and look forward to getting my feet on the ground again, and I'll be looking out for the 1st sign of Diamond Head and Pearl Harbor.
Once we landed we headed for the baggage claim area to collect our belongings. It seems that our's was just about the last off the plane. I called the hotel and they sent the van to pick us up. The hotel was located just outside the airport. The sun and the trade winds felt great. Once settled in, we went down to the pool and went for a swim, The sun was really warm, and the cool pool water was a little chilly from the wind, but still it was refreshing. Austin was having a great time as he usually does in the pool. We stayed out for about and hour or so then headed back to the room to take a short nap. After our naps, we headed down to the hotel restaurant and had dinner. Sharon and I had Chef's salad, Austin had a burger and fries. The salad hit the spot. Since we were still on Orlando time, we had dinner at 11:30 P.M., so our clocks were all out of whack. They had a salt water tank in the restaurant which was really nothing to write home about. After dinner we just headed back to the room, showered and Austin was asleep within 17 minutes, out to the world. Sharon and I forced our selves to stay awake just trying to adjust to the 6 hour time difference. We finally gave up and went to sleep about 8:15 P.M. local time. As always, Austin was out within minutes, In fact, we all were. After speaking with the front desk clerk it was decided that it would not be possible to get to Pearl Harbor because we had to be at the airport 2 hours before taking off and it wouldn't allow us any time to spend at the museum.