Well, my trip back home served as my punishment for having such a good time in Hawaii and served to solidify the fact that traveling to and from Hawaii can really only be a yearly event. Otherwise a person might lose their minds and/or risk spending the better part of the rest of their lives either on airplanes or in airports.
I had a very long day of mostly just waiting around for my ride to the airport at about 6:30pm. Apparently my flight had already been delayed, but I was going to be just sitting around and waiting whether I was in town in Kona or at the airport, so I might as well check in my bags and stuff. The line was horrendous as there were several flights out that night but I had more than enough time to get through. Once on the other side of security I could jump on my computer and follow the "progress" of my plane. The plane we were taking had taken off close to two hours late from Los Angeles, which of course meant that we would likely be taking off at least two hours late from Kona. I was due to have a two hour layover in Los Angeles on the way back, which at the time seemed like more than enough of a cushion. I hadn't even gone anywhere yet and already I knew I was in big trouble.
Now, sometimes I find the Kona airport adorable in the fact that it is so small and cute and all outdoors. At 9:30 at night at the beginning of 6000 miles of travel "cute" is not a word I would choose to describe it. It's more like, "How about some air conditioning?" Or, much more accurately, "Why are there literally no information screens telling us anything about what time we're leaving or what gate I'm supposed to be waiting at? Where am I supposed to go and when do I finally get to leave?!?!?" I had just hit a finite point where it was time to go home, and things were not looking good.
Finally at some point it became somewhat apparent which gate we were leaving from, and we had to pass through another screening for agricultural stuff to leave the island. On the other side of this were three gates for the three planes leaving at roughly the same time, all of which were full of passengers stuffed into way too small of a space to accommodate all of them. This plus the continued lack of communication or information made me about ready to see if I could probably get my pilot's license and charter a flight home before it was finally time to leave. I'll admit at this point I was overreacting, but did I mention I was exhausted?
It was us Los Angeles passengers, another flight to San Francisco which I also could've been on as an alternative route back, and a flight to Phoenix which again, could've been my starting point. Phoenix took off on time. San Francisco was in the same spot we were... except at one point it became apparent that things got worse for them. They announced that their plane was having some sort of radio frequency issue, hence the delay. Our plane was fine, it just wasn't there yet. Eventually they announced that they were boarding their flight, but the particular issue they had meant that they were prohibited from flying to the mainland, so they would be stopping over in Honolulu. Honestly, I have no idea how that was supposed to better their situation. I have no idea what happened to those people but I'd be absolutely shocked if any of them left for the mainland that night.
Eventually, after I was about ready to start swimming to California since I'd thrown my goggles in my carry-on, we finally got to board our flight. I spent the entire time unable to relax due to knowing almost without question that I was not going to make my flight to Newark. I might have slept some, but the little girl in the seat next to me slept more I know because she kept on falling asleep on my arm in spite of the fact that her father was in the seat on the opposite side of her. I suspect a few times he pushed her to my side.
My flight landed at 7:04am. My next flight was at 7:05am. Of course that was the only flight I was scheduled for in the entire duration of the trip that actually took off on time. So I got to spend some time in line at customer service wondering if I'd even be able to get home that day. The nice lady at the counter told me that they had already automatically rebooked me on another overnight flight home. Yeah, I know Hawaii is far away, but it is not two nights worth of travel far away. She found me another option through Cleveland a few hours later, getting me home four hours later than initially planned. All in all, not so terrible, so I took my $10 food voucher - a nearly useless consolation prize as at the Los Angeles airport I don't think you can get even a simple sandwich for less than $12 - and got to feel slightly more relaxed that at least I would soon be headed in the right direction.
The next flight took off twenty minutes late. Ok, not so bad. The woman sitting next to me never fell asleep on my arm, but the morbidly obese man sitting behind me spent the entire four hours of the flight snoring like a motorboat. Why is it that the people who snore so loudly are the ones who fall asleep the quickest and stay asleep the longest? I could tell in between my trying to watch Spider-Man for the third time in my travels (they kept playing it, and it was like seeing it for the 20th time because I swear I JUST saw that movie when it starred Tobey Maguire...) I could hear him waking himself up, but he'd just go right back to sleep. I'm just glad I wasn't the poor woman stuck sitting next to him.
Upon my arrival in Cleveland at about 7:00 that night I was annoyingly not surprised to see that my last flight had already been delayed. Scheduled for 7:50, it already said 9:29, and given how things were going, of course I knew it would probably be later than that. I walked around the airport aimlessly for a bit, just to move after so much time sitting still. It turns out I probably should've sat down earlier because everything in the Cleveland airport shuts down at about 8pm like it's midnight since there were about 17 of us left to leave the airport either heading to Manchester or Grand Rapids.
My flight was coming from Baltimore and finally it was headed for us, and there was some hope that I might see home soon. I couldn't even tell anymore what day it was or where I was or what was going on. What I did know was that when my plane finally arrived and I watched the few pieces of luggage get loaded on it, there definitely wasn't a bike case involved. Awesome. But again, very much not unexpected. At that point I only cared that I made it back. It was one of those small planes that only has two seats on one side and one on the other, and finally some good luck came when I had nobody sitting next to me. Sure, there was a crying baby in the seat in front of me, but at least I could elevate my feet.
Finally, at 11pm after 20+ hours of travel, I made it home. Our tiny plane load was the only group at the airport, and I walked to the baggage claim area and saw that of course nobody was at customer service. But before I could even try and figure out what to do next, I saw my bike just sitting all by itself in the over-sized bag area. I was too shocked to think anything, just picked it up and then stood there for another minute or two wondering what to do now about my suitcase. Then again before I had a chance to try and think, I saw an airport worker walking our direction wheeling a cart with one bag on it. Yeah, it was my suitcase. "It got here before you did," she said. "I saw you were on this flight." I should've hugged her but I was so tired I could barely even thank her. I just couldn't believe it. So at least things ended well there. Apparently there was another flight to Newark at 8:30 from Los Angeles, and I did not make it through customer service in time to get on that one, but my bags did. Sometimes the airlines can do a little something right.
So now I'm home and trying to adjust to life back on the east coast. I think wimpy things like I can't go outside because it's 55 degrees and I might freeze. And while I've actually been falling asleep fine, I'm still sleeping for way, way too long in the morning. Or I'll get up to swim and come home and go back to sleep. Fortunately it's a rest week so I've got more time for that.
For now, just tapering until the race, really. Very strange. I can say I'm very much over all of this bike taking apart and putting back together and upon my return from Phoenix I plan to stay in one place for a good, long time!
No comments:
Post a Comment