Sunday, July 29, 2007

I Don't Sleep On Planes

Leaving Seattle, we flew between Mt. Rainier and Mt St Helens. It was the best visibility of the whole trip and I can finally appreciate how really high Rainier is. We were climbing through 15,000 feet when the co-pilot came over the intercom to draw our attention to the massive snow capped peak. We’ll save some time on our next trip to get up close and personal with more of this natural beauty. That trip, only in the talking stages, already sounds like another full agenda. Our itinerary for Friday was to travel from Seattle to Dallas to Los Angeles to Lihue. Yes, I know, that’s not a direct route. We were at the Los Angeles Airport about to embark upon the third and final leg of our trip to Lihue, Kauai when the lady at the counter made an announcement about being way oversold and they needed volunteers to give up their seats. We’ve done this in the past. It’s called a bump. The airlines takes your seats, puts you on the next flight to your destination and gives you some sort of compensation. Here’s what we got: They put us on the next flight to Honolulu which was leaving in five minutes, gave us an $800 travel credit good for a year, put us up in a hotel in Honolulu for the night, gave us a $20 dinner credit, a $10 breakfast credit and booked us on a plane to Lihue for early the next morning. So, here I sit, very early on Saturday morning in the Honolulu airport waiting for our flight to Lihue. We haven’t had more than a few hours sleep over the past 24, traveled thousands of miles crammed into a space smaller than a phone booth and we’ve been eating airport food . It’s hard to say which has bothered me more but I keep telling myself the perks were worth it. Carl has found a used newspaper to browse while I tap out the keys to keep everyone updated. When we finally arrive in Lihue, there are issues still facing us. Where is our luggage and will our rental car still be available? I have to say that it’s much easier to find a place that you only visit every other year during daylight hours.

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