In order to get to Hawaii in a reasonable amount of time, you pretty much have to fly on a plane. The thing about flying on a plane is that the very best you can do is touch down at your intended destination on schedule with all your body parts intact. The worse thing is that the Coast Guard is out searching for Delta Flight 255’s little black box at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Other unpleasant things include making a Capt. Scully landing on the water and waiting out on the wings for someone to find you.
Another inconvenience of flying includes having your luggage fly to the Aleutian Islands while your actual person lands in Honolulu.
That didn’t happen, thank goodness, but we were separated from a week’s worth of shirts, shorts, socks, and underwear when the conveyor belt in the bowels of the Honolulu International Airport jammed and all the luggage piled up in a confused mass. The Unclogger of Luggage Jams Manager was off that day, and no one could seem to figure out how to solve the puzzle. So, we sat and waited, and waited, and waited. It was pushing 6 and our ship sailed at 7 PM.
Finally, an airport worker went down under and burrowed to the bottom of the luggage pile like a West Virginia coal miner going for a lode of bituminous coal, dislodged the mess and retrieved our bags one at a time. Our suitcase looked as though it had barely survived a State Farm collision test, but it was in one piece, so we were finally on our way to the ship – Norwegian’s Pride of America.
One good thing that happened on our flight, however, was my discovery of compression socks. Nancy bought me a couple of pairs ahead of the cruise because when I sit down for 10 hours at a time, my feet swell to approximately double their normal size. They look like clogs with toes, and it takes several days for them to shrink back to normal. It was something of an effort to put the tight socks on. It was like trying to squeeze into a pair of ladies’ tights. But I did, feeling like if I had a wig, some lipstick, and a nice purse, I could go to a drag show.
But my feet didn’t swell. The socks worked great, so all parts of flying are not bad.
We ate dinner on the ship that night at what would have been 1:30 AM in our time. I haven’t stayed up past one in the morning since, well, never. So, we were dog tired and crashed immediately. We would wake up the next morning in Maui, and with a suitcase full of clean clothes. Hawaii, here we come.