We left Winter and went to Summer...

 

The Girls' side of the plane...

 

The Fellas' side...Randy is SO excited! ;)

 

I promised this “What I Did on My Vacation to Summer” essay a week ago, but that red eye flight kicked me to the curb! And my immune system took a brief hiatus so I was forced to coach the white cells into fighting off a bug that kept trying to invade…which I did by sleeping and resting often…voluntarily and involuntarily!

It’s all made my return to the PNW time zone quite delayed. Thursday, I woke up at 8:15 -- had promised to meet my sisters and parents for coffee at 8:30. Did.Not.Happen…until later, but I did get there eventually and gave them the Vacation Report which, of course, was verbose.

As this one likely will be now…because, well, ME!

Our trip got off to an inauspicious start when our flight was delayed an hour, and there was a strong headwind, so it took longer than planned. Then, because we arrived late, we had to wait on the tarmac for ½ hour while they found a place for us to park.

We were fortunate to arrive at the shuttle pick up just as the rental car shuttle did, so we felt our luck was about to change.

And we were wrong.

Because Thrifty decided that the way to be thrifty was to employ the barest minimum of people for 10:30 at night. Two shuttle loads of people were dropped off, and one agent was on duty. Well, there was one more, but apparently she could only help Blue Chip people…and we were not Blue Chip people…

For awhile, I was pretty sure that we had been dropped off at the Dept. of Licensing…you know, the place where employees take their break even if 1000 people are waiting in line.

Anyway, by the time we got our rental car, we were all on the cranky side…way over to the cranky side! Then we had to navigate our way off the Nimitz highway, which is conveniently underneath the H-1 freeway that we were trying to access. Our navigational aids kept telling us we were already on H-1, no matter how many times we told them we were underneath it. Finally, by some stroke of masterful navigation (thanks Dillon!)we escaped the Nimitz, and headed west to Kapolei, where we knew there was a Zippy’s restaurant that would be open at 11:30pm. HUNGER was not helping our emotional states.

It was open, alright, and crowded! We had to wait for a table…and then, for our food because they were so busy. What??? In our state of crankiness, we kept saying to each other, “What is the matter with these people? Why aren’t they home in bed? Why are they bringing their children out to eat dinner at midnight?” Some wisely adhered to the adage, “if you can’t say something good, don’t say anything at all” and kept their heads down. Evidently, we were witnessing a cultural practice we couldn’t understand…nor appreciate at that moment.

Eventually, the food arrived and we all felt our spirits begin to rise – and that was a good thing as we still had to get to a grocery store so that we would have breakfast in the morning, and sunscreen to protect us for our much anticipated landing on the beach.

Next stop, Safeway – where we bought a bunch of stuff that kind of made sense for our needs of the next day, though we later became aware of some regretful omissions.

And then we were off for the last leg of the journey to Our Beach, our home for the next week, Makaha and the Hawaiian Princess.

Of course, that couldn’t be simple either. We had trouble finding the keys for one of our condos, and had to solicit help from security. Then it took a while to find a place to park because the lot was full…And the wind was blowing a gale while we divided the groceries and got the luggage to the correct condos, which were 10 floors apart.

By the time we located our beds, it was 1:45 am Hawaii time – equivalent to 3:45 am PNW time – 12 hours after we had boarded our flight.

At that moment, I wasn’t entirely sure that going to Hawaii was such a good idea…Before I conjured up too much trouble, I decided the better part of wisdom was to not think too much until I had 8 hours of sleep…I resolved to avoid consideration of these little annoyances, and fears until I was sitting on the beach.

And, of course, by then I had a much better perspective.