Bringing the Jucy back to the Motherland, sad to return it, but it probably needed a good washing. Thank you Jucy, you were awesome!
Waiting for the Hawaiian Airlines counter to open...
A bit of sustenance for the evening:
Customs forms, everything routine so far.
In the Hawaiian Airlines lounge, where things took a turn. We kept hearing various people getting paged, then a few more. It didn't seem so abnormal until we heard our names over the intercom. Hmm...
After a few circles trying to locate the seemingly-secret counter in the basement (for real), we finally found someone who took our boarding passes and baggage tickets, did some typing and printing, and handed us different boarding passes along with the comment "your bags should still make it." Great! So - what's the deal?
Turns out the Hawaiian Airlines flight was cancelled for a mechanical issue so we were being moved over to Qantas for the first leg to Honolulu. Ah, OK then! Sounds good.
However, we didn't depart until 10-something, so now we would (hopefully) land even before we took off. Cool!
Setting up for the long haul across the western part of the Pacific Ocean, happy to see individual movies were available to keep us entertained:
Deadpool - offbeat, crazy weird, and super funny!
Waiting for food:
With food. It's a good thing my blog posts aren't normally this mundane.
We crossed the Equator and the International Dateline at almost the same time, and now it's back to afternoon. Or morning, I couldn't say for sure. It's all so confusing. Which way is the sun now?
We got some sleep and rested up, which was good because we had a major dash through the Honolulu airport, picking up our luggage and going through customs, running outside the terminal and across the street to another terminal, standing and trying to be patient in the SLOWEST security line ever, then dealing with John getting stopped for a closer look at his carry-on (at least there were no knives in it this time) while I took off at a sprint through the terminal to hold the door to the plane.
They were patient, although curious why I didn't have a husband in tow. Soon John appeared and they let us board.
Aloha, y'all!
I love flying Hawaiian Airlines. And just because I was in "documentation mode" (and I had missed the whole Honolulu terminal on camera), here are some images from the best pre-flight safety video ever.
Ladies at the ocean showing how to fasten your seat belt:
Surfboard dude next to a sign that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist at any beach:
Using hula to demonstrate the location of the emergency exits, over here, and more over there:
At Haleakala on Maui! What to do if the oxygen masks come down at high altitude:
Outrigger canoers! Talking about the life vests, of course.
I can never get enough of that video.
Taxiing to take off from Honolulu, hello pretty island and beautiful mountains!
Possibly Diamond Head on the horizon:
The hills where I volunteered at the HURT 100 earlier this year:
Lovely view of Honolulu:
Waikiki and Diamond Head - and yes, I will always be happy to return to Hawaii!
The sun sets for the 2nd time that day (for us):
Almost back to the Mainland...
The lights of San Jose:
This time I wasn't so rushed, so here's a picture from inside the San Jose airport:
And ... it's almost 10 pm. On Monday. Guess we'll be departing Sydney soon - oh wait...
No way our bags made it on the 2nd plane - except they did! Wow, for all that could have gone wrong, that was one of the smoothest trips we have taken, super lucky and happy how it worked out.
With Scott! And Kip! (and our luggage!) - yay!
Welcome back to CA, why thank you, it's great to be here! Now maybe we should get some sleep.
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