1. Austin to Houston
What is there to say about this leg?
There’s barely enough time for flight attendants to rush up and down the aisles offering beverages. We were crammed into a United AIrlines Canadair CRJ-700. If the flight attendants went up and down the aisles, I don’t remember it.
It was too early in the morning, and frankly our minds were focused on the destination.
2. Houston non-stop to Honolulu
This was the long leg.
The view of the arid mountains of northwest Mexico and the blue Gulf of California and skinny Baja under the wing of our Boeing 767 was nice. But after that there were many hours of … well … nothing but sky and clouds and ocean.
Fast forward eight hours.
On the ground in Honolulu, the skies were blue, white clouds rolled by, palm trees swayed in the breeze. We scrambled to pull off our sweaters.
And we wandered in amaze down the halls of the airport whispering to ourselves about how there were no walls. The hallway and chairs and carpet and counters at the gates were all open to the outside.
“No walls!? How can this be?” we asked ourselves. “Does it not rain, here?”
We guessed that Hawaiian rains must just gently fall straight down from the sky. Except when it doesn’t. Then what?
3. Honolulu to Lihue
Our last leg was a quick 30 minute hop to Lihue, Kauai.
We sat on the left side of the Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 717. So flying west from Honolulu, we had a wonderful, unobstructed view of … ocean. Whitecaps all the way to Tahiti.
“Ladies and gentlement,” the pilot said over the intercom soon after takeoff, “for those of you sitting on the right of the aircraft, we are passing by Pearl Harbor…” For those of us on the left, there were the whitecaps.
And when we arrived, we again wandered in amaze down the halls of the airport whispering to ourselves about how there were no outside walls.
“How can this be!?”
Whatever. After 13 hours of traveling, we were finally here, and it wasn’t even dark, yet!