Two hours of sleep.
That’s all the sleep I got last night after watching the college basketball game. I was concerned that if I went to sleep, I would not wake up in time to catch my plane. I had a taxi scheduled for 4:15 am to take me to the airport and give me plenty of time to participate in the TSA charade before boarding the plane headed to Oakland, California, at 6:05.
Oakland???? Why Oakland? After spending two hours in Oakland, I would board another plane and fly to Kona. It is almost second nature now for me to be going to Hawaii. I tend to take it for granted. Most people get excited about traveling to Hawaii – it’s just something I do now.
The flight to Oakland was half full. Half full, half empty . . . depends on your point of view.
The flight from Oakland to Kona is chock-a-block . . . regardless of your point of view!
After going through the door into the plane, I am stopped when a girl who is sitting in the front row stands up holding her backpack in her arms. In the front row, there is nowhere to stow your backpack (your “personal item”). In other rows, you can stow it under the seat in front of you, but in the front row, there is no seat in front of you!
I stand there just inside the door while she tries to find a place in an overhead bin. The first two overhead bins on each side of the plane are already full, so she has to go back to the 6th or 7th row before finding an open space. She lifts the backpack up into the overhead compartment. Then she changes her mind and brings it back down, placing it on the floor. She pulls out a water bottle and places it on the floor next to the backpack.
I can feel the line of people behind me growing impatient as they crane their necks around to see what is the delay. There really is no indication of any impatience, just my own feelings.
She picks up the backpack and puts it back into the overhead compartment. She walks back to the first row, and just before she gets there, she stops and turns around and goes back to the 7th row. She picks up the water bottle she left on the floor and struggles to put it into the backpack that is stowed in the overhead bin, but this time, in an outside pocket of the backpack, then returns to her seat in the front row.
I walk down the aisle of the plane followed by the line of people behind me. I find an empty row of seats in row 13 and I step out of the aisle so that the rest of the passengers can continue on towards the empty seats further back.
Yes, there are no assigned seats. It is first come, first served – a “cattle call” some have called it. You board according to how well you are able to time your “check-in” 24 hours prior to the flight time – unless you are a family traveling with small children, military in uniform, disabled and need extra time to board, or are willing to pay a premium for the right to board earlier than everyone else.
I chose this row, not just because it is currently empty, but also because the overhead compartment is empty as well and I will be able to put my rollerbag and my backpack up there. Standing in my row, out of the aisle, I take out what I think I will need on the flight – my tablet, my glasses, a pen, my notebook – and then place it in the overhead bin because there is a break in the flow of people still boarding and looking for a seat.
I wonder why there is break in the flow of people and if that means that everyone is on board, and I glance towards the front of the plane. There is that same teenaged girl from the 1st row (she looks to be 16, 17, or 18 years old) struggling against traffic, trying to get back to row 1 from row 7. She has her water bottle in her hand.
One of the flight attendants picks up the microphone next to the entry door of the plane. She stumbles through trying to pronounce the names of three passengers and asks them to raise their hand if they are on board. She is partially hidden by the people standing in the aisle still trying to find a seat, or stow their luggage in the overhead bins as someone in row 8 or 9 raises their hand. I wonder if she sees them. A few minutes later, she asks again for one of the original three.
We wait an additional 45 minutes past the time we were supposed to take off – I don’t know if it is because of this “lost passenger” or some other reason. Eventually, they close the door and we push back from the gate. The flight attendants proceed with the safety briefing.
The flight to Oakland, the layover in Oakland, and the flight to Kona were rather routine and uneventful. As we approached Hawaii we were given the typical State of Hawaii Agriculture form. Some of the passengers were dismayed/confused/pissed off about the form. They did not understand that it was absolutely meaningless – like so many of Hawaii’s official rules from their overreaching “nanny” government. It asks you to declare any fruits, vegetables, soil, seeds, animals, etc., that you are bringing into Hawaii. The form threatens you with huge fines if you do not declare these items. what nobody points out, or stops to think about, is that from the shear number of these forms collected every day, there is no way that anyone could ever be able to read, tabulate, file, sort, etc., these and they probably put them into a cardboard box and take them to the landfill, or stack therm somewhere for the cockroaches to have something to eat! The new lie that is most common in Hawaii is “Due to staff shortages, it will take a while before anyone from the department responds to your request!” This has surpassed the old lie, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you!”
The flight attendant had to explain, numerous times, that while this form was mandatory, it was the government of Hawaii that was mandating it, not the airlines!
Also, the back side of the form that asks where you are staying, how many times you have been to Hawaii, how many are traveling with you, what islands you plan to visit, etc., is purely optional! Furthermore, once you give the form to the flight attendant, they stack them together and turn them in to someone at the airport. There is no one that correlates the forms with the passengers, or checks up on what you put on the form.
I was on the side of the plane that faced Maui, but Haleakala (the volcano on Maui) was totally obscured by clouds.
When I picked up my two checked “bags” (they were cardboard boxes), one had been opened and then resealed with about a mile of clear packing tape. Inside, I later found the standard form inside from TSA that said that they had opened it. The other one was so wet, (it was raining in Oakland so it probably got wet out on the tarmac) that I thought the cardboard would melt, but it made it all the way to the property.
Brian Jones (my neighbor on Ahi) picked me up from the bus stop in Waiohinu and gave me a ride to Holowai. The property looked much the same as when I left – just a bit more green.
The internet/phone cable provider had hired a tree trimming crew to come through the subdivision and trim all the trees out of the cable wires on the power poles. They cut everything within about 6 feet of the cables, leaving about 10 feet of trees/stumps/branches below. The good thing is that they ran everything they cut through a chipper instead of just leaving it along the side of the road.
It was lightly sprinkling and I hurried to get my bags under cover. Then I took the car into town for ice, but the market was all out of ice! I heated water on the stove for ramen noodles and a warm drink before putting sheets on the bed.
TropicalCastaway 