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on to O'ahu!

Hey! Today is 03/02/01. Wierd patterns.

0600: The mo'a (feral chicken which have the run of the lowlands) roosters are serenading us this morning, but the alarm isn't set for another hour. Rose and I get a few precious minutes to chat. Then the dawn begins to break, the palm trees becoming visible through our room's windows. The bags were packed and moved into the trunk of the rental car yesterday, the room is clean, and we're ready to go. We thought about extending for a couple of days, but between the air, car, and overbooked hotel it became too much of a bother. Besides, a weekend in San Francisco with the grandparents, getting ready start my new job and for my father visiting next week is not such a bad idea.

0645: Morning has broken, although the rays of the rising sun haven't yet painted them orange and yellow. I take one last panorama from our lanai (balcony) - below - at the Coconut Beach hotel as things brighten. All that's left to do is wake Isaac in fifteen minutes, take a few last-minute items to the car, and head out to Ma's Family for a last meal on Kaua'i. Did I mention that we rented another Chrysler Sebring convertible? Hey, what's that sound? Oh, just Rose taking a photo of me updating this web site.

We return the car, toss our bags onto a cart, and walk across the street to the Lihu'e airport (LIH). We check our bags through to San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and subject our carry-on bags to an agricultural inspection. (I score a sticker for my ukulele case. :-) All the while we're enjoying the live music of two very enthusiastic musicians. Makes me even sorrier to leave.

As is my habit, we're early at the airport and early at the departure gate. (It's not as bad as the picture looks; only about a half-hour early. I've never missed a flight, and I hate the idea of running to a gate.)

Very shortly there's a long queue. What you can't experience from the panorama is how incredibly hot the windows get, and so everyone is slowly being baked. It makes everyone's good behavior even more surprising.

The plane arrives, and we watch as some folks deplane from the rear of the plane. The rest - the vast majority - leave from the forward exit, through the jetway. We can see they're a motley group of tourists, not a sports team or somesuch, so we're not really sure why they were chosen to traipse through the heat.

We board our plane. There really is something wonderful about pre-boarding with a child. The ground crew didn't communicate their plans to the waiting passengers, so there was a bunch-up as they tried to sort out the first class, wheelchair, pre-board, and regular folks at the last minute. One would think they'd have gotten it right after the first few thousand tries. Sigh. Still, we get on board without any fisticuffs (not that there wasn't muttering...).

We push away from our gate. Isaac is enthralled by the process, and urges us to go "faster and faster and faster and faster and faster and faster and whoooooooooosh TAKE OFF". And we do, bidding a farewell to Kaua'i. A'hou'e ho (until we meet again).

We really enjoy the twenty-minute flight from LIH to Honolulu, O'ahu (HNL), where our story continues.

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