Hurricane in Honolulu

I took my sister Jennie on a layover with me to Honolulu last week. It was my Christmas present to her. Normally, getting to and from Hawaii is hard on an employee pass because the flights are always full, but I guess there is a calm before the storm so to speak, and the loads were quite decent.

The crew was pretty nice and before we left for Honolulu, the Captain let her sit in his seat in the cockpit, but she was afraid to touch anything. My sister must have good non-rev karma because she got a seat in first on the way out. Given that the flight is over 8 hours, I was glad she could be comfortable. The purser and the other aisle flight attendant wined and dined her, to the point that she got a little upset stomach even. While she was enjoying the good life, I was back slaving in coach selling sandwiches and chips for $10 a pop.

We landed in Honolulu and were immediately transformed by the tropical air (or perhaps it was more gratitude for not being in the 30 degree weather we left behind back home). One of the ladies on the crew, Suzanne, had a favorite sushi place she liked to go to, where you could get all the made to order sushi you wanted for $20. We had planned to join her and some of the other crewmembers, but when we got to the hotel, we learned the owner had closed up and went home to Japan for the holidays.

We joined Cindy, Suzanne, and Sonia by the pool with the pilots from the earlier trip and had some wine and then went to the restaurant at the hotel for a quick dinner before retiring. Jennie had lobster rolls and I had calamari and a Kona Pale Ale.

After dinner we walked along Waikiki down to one of the many ABC Stores so Jennie could do a little souvenir shopping.

We wanted to hit Pearl Harbor in the morning and so we arranged for a shuttle to take us, as it was cheaper than a cab, but faster than taking the city bus. Since our body clocks were four hours ahead, we figured we could make the 7:30am opening at Pearl Harbor no problem and arranged a 5:45am wake up call (9:45am body time). We both slept like logs.

Things went downhill rather fast when we woke up the next morning to see intense wind and driving rain outside. It reminded me of when a hurricane would come ashore when I lived in Florida. Still we would not let the weather get us down and we departed the hotel at 6:45am for Pearl Harbor. If we knew at the time the island of Oahu was experiencing massive power outages, flooding, landslides, and traffic accidents, we might have opted to stay in.

I brought an umbrella, thinking that would keep us dry, but when we got to Pearl Harbor, we had to stand outside in the driving rain and it was like someone was throwing buckets of water on us or spraying us with a hose. We were soaked to the bone. The Park Service finally let us all wait inside the building under cover, where we found a lady selling ponchos. Would have been nice to have those sooner.

Because of the weather, the Navy was not running the boat out to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, so we were only able to tour the museum and see the short film about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Finally, due to rain and flooding, they closed the entire complex, and Jennie and I were forced to wait under a little covered hut for our shuttle back to the hotel. It took Elmer the driver forever to get to us due to weather, and we watched as tour group after tour group left the complex. Finally he showed up, but then we had to go to the airport first and pick up some folks before heading back to Waikiki.

Once we made it back to the hotel, we changed out of our soaked clothes. My socks were so wet, I had to wring them out and hang them out to dry. It was still raining so hard. Jennie gave up and got back into bed and quickly passed out. I was a little worried that the bad weather would somehow affect our flight out that night and had visions of something happening and Jennie not getting on, and me leaving her stranded in Honolulu (I think our mother would probably kill me), so I went down to the lobby and used the free wifi to check and make sure everything was ok.

Finally, a few hours later, there was a break in the weather, so we got back out and walked along Waikiki and the beach area. We would have liked to have gone to Diamond Head, but the weather was too iffy and we did not want to get stuck again.

We had dinner at Wolfgang Puck's outside our hotel (I get a little discount) and then went back up to rest and get ready for our flight home.

Suzanne, from our crew surprised us each with a real flower lei and Jennie lucked out and scored one of the crew rest seats going home (going to Hawaii the flight is over 8 hours so we have four seats that are designated for us, that have a better recline, foot rest, isolated cabin, etc., however coming from Hawaii the flight is blocked at under 8 hours so those seats are up for grabs, but the nice HNL ground staff blocked the seat for her). Jennie wanted an ambien after take off, and quickly passed out, but had a super hard time waking up when we landed the next morning in Dallas. It kind of made her loopy the whole next day.

We had sad news upon arrival with a message from my dad that our Grandpa Pete had passed away earlier that morning. He had been in declining health for a long time and at 96 his body had just given out. :-(