Day 1
Goal: Bartlett to Maui
Summary: The travel day from hell (and you guys at work were thinking you had it bad).
Seems easy enough doesn't it, well let me tell you it ain't.........
It all started as we dashed out of the old Bartlett homestead. Licor (pronounced liquor) was aware Sheri was going and stole Kevin's side of the bed. This sucks but actually it doesn't, especially when one (k) plays with the machine (the one I'm typing on) until about 4:30am trying to get the him ready for the trip and get the Hawaiian ISP set (insert URL here later). The good news is I succeeded, the bad news, uggghh about 3 hours of sleep, Sheri crashed earlier and went with the get up early route.
Kevin worked/packed until he dropped after setting the Dish Network to record all those damn (whoops cover the nephews eyes, hope Joe can't read that yet) programs to the hard drive. I will be getting the honor of paying them $9.95 for the pleasure of letting them use my own hard drive which I payed for.........oh and I had to call them and sit on hold from the limo on the ride to the airport to tell them to turn "Personal TV" on. This is a rip off but atleast we were on the road. I might add only 10 minutes late, little did we know this was only the beginning of what was to be a lot of "late" (American Airlines style) for the remainder of the day.
I'll point out at this point (as I am typing) that we are cruising over the Pacific Ocean right about now and we ain't on American Airlines either. They suck (somehow this word keeps popping up). It all starts when we arrive at O'hare and Sheri checks the monitor and the old 11:40 AM flight is now a 12:00 noon flight. Oooh, this might make the connecting flight a problem. Ah, never to worry, that was nothing compared to standing in line for an hour cause AA doesn't have enought ticket people. This was the last time we saw our luggage (pray for it cause it made most of the flights which we didn't). It is ticketed for AA to LA (as in CA) and then it will be on Hawaiian Air to Honolulu and the last leg is Hawaiian to Maui.
So while we stood around at the counter while AA tried to figure out how in the hell they were going to get us to Maui because they can't seem to get the plane due in from Raleigh Durham to Chicago for us to join it on its journey to LA. Well, after the wonderful woman (who Sheri pointed out by asking "Who's Clint Black's wife ?"). She (the ticket agent) didn't see the resemblance but I pointed out that when Sheri asked, I knew why she was asking. Sidetracked a little there but she set us up with 3 flights to get to Maui by like 9-10 CST . Remember Kevin likes direct flights, as little time in the air as possible, unfortunately he/I am cheap too. I just looked at my watch and its 1:00AM Chicago Time and we haven't made it halfway to Honolulu yet ( I know this cause there is a contest to pick the time when we are halfway there for a bottle of champagne). We were planning on two flights, one to LA and one on to Maui. We now have three and the first doesn't leave for an hour and a half. Looks likes its lunch time, could have been lunch on the first flight but no, here is the way we started our lovely field trip.
Though maybe a little hard to see as its a little dark here and the old digital camera flash doesn't always to so well, this is the McDonald's start to our vacation. This is the bag after we slammed lunch instead of eating the pop tarts kevin had in his pocket that he didn't eat on the ride in because he was on hold waiting for the dish folks. Anyway it was lunch time and this was the closest available.
So we made it to LA on the first changed AA flight, we then took our AA tickets to the connecting gate and asked if we were in the right place, they confirmed it and we sat for about 1.5 hours and read and tested the Sprint phone to see how the coverage was in LA (the Motorola CDMA Sprint phone kicked behind in LA but the Skytel pager didn't do so well).
We then went to board the plane when they called our row but when they put our tickets through the nifty little machine it beeped, tried again and the same thing, tried Kevin's now (heck who needs Sheri), mine failed miserably also. Turns out we had AA tickets (guy in the seat in front of me is trying very hard to smash the screen on this machine, I think he'll be in my lap any minute now) which were for Hawaiin airlines and as the next finest AA friend we made indicated, we missed this flight already. He said there was one more flight to Honolulu on United (ah the friendly skies) but we had to go to the ticketing agents which was that way. So we took the collection of carry ons (and if u know my wifes traveling style, this is a lot of bags), and headed back to the ticketing agents. This was on long walk to which we were met with the standard AA stand in line for an hour. So far, Kevin hasn't blown yet but he's warning Sheri at this point that this is imminent and if the next AA representative that so much as looks at me funny is going to get it with both barrels. So this clown manages to get us on the United flight which will atleast get us to Hawaii, there aren't any flights to Maui left so we are kissing off the first nights rent in HI and looking forward to more AA reps finding us a hotel to stay in. And remember our luggage was checked through on several other airlines that we are no longer currently flying. We should be able to get it in Maui eventually but its probably sitting in Maui right now going around and around and around.
At this point, I snoozed with about 2 hours to go on this flight to Honolulu, they haven't pulled a winner for the Champagne prize for guessing the time we get to the half way point so I'm figuring its safe to sleep at this point. Sheri had of course given permission to wake her should she be the lucky winner. ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz..........
Awoke awhile later and Sheri is up and happy, hmmmm...this is good, I look out the window and we're still way up there. ZZZZzzzzzzzz........boom, next thing I know we're landing and we have made it to HI atleast. Thank god, and United.
So we head for our friends at the AA desk to get assistance for somewhere to stay. No such luck, this place is abandoned and there is only 2 people anywhere near the AA desk and they swear they are not working and haven't the slightest interest in helping us. Sheri is waaaaayyyyyy to nice to them. Kevin is so tired and disoriented the sarcasm sets in and they don't even notice the rampant sarcasm indicating what a sad job they are doing of losing a customer for life.
We grumble a bit. We find a hotel. We stand around waiting for the shuttle but we get there quickly. Watch now says 3 AM Chicago time. Its been 18 hours and we still haven't made it to Maui. So Sheri checks in.
And Kevin doesn't.
Oh and do you see the thing on the table ?
You guessed it, Sheri won the champagne bottle for picking the closest time to the second at which time we would be half way to Honolulu. Go figure but things are looking up at this point.
So we are in Hawaii and we are short of our destination but never the less happy to have somewhere to crash. Tomorrow we continue the journey. Remember, we are on a mission from god 8-)