After what seems like an eternity, but was in actuality about three and a half months, we finally found a bit of time to go away. Sort of. You see, I was teased with a block of days off in my schedule at the end of January that would have enabled us to leave even earlier, but Nicole’s soccer team somehow made it to the playoffs with just two wins for the season. Mercifully her team lost their first playoff game and within a couple of hours of their defeat, we found ourselves on a plane bound for Honolulu.
Most people would find this all very odd, but luckily as standby travelers, we have the option to disappear at a moment’s notice. The timing was a little tight, but anyone who followed the OJ Simpson trial in the mid 90s knows that it is more than possible to drive from the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles (where both Nicole had a playoff game and OJ Simpson did a little murdering) to LAX in less than 30 minutes.
Those with a decent memory may recall that we tried to get to Hawaii back in October to jumpstart a Pacific island hop adventure, but we could not get on any single flight leaving Los Angeles. After our fifth attempt, we hung our heads, and went home. For whatever reason, late January seems to be a much better time to attempt this trip (at least from a standby perspective). There were over 100 open seats on our Alaska flight from LAX to HNL. We even got upgraded to business class for the first time in almost a year. Oh how we have missed such perks.
While Alaska and their 737s aren’t really equipped to have a lavish first class cabin with lie-flat pods or anything of the like, sometimes it’s nice to just have a comfier chair, fewer seatmates, and a meal served with presentation. Nicole had a fruit and cheese platter whilst I had some Kobe beef steak with rice. It was a nice level of fance that Bricole have not experienced in some time. It was also nice to toast Nicole’s end of season with a glass of wine.
We booked our hotel at the Hilton Garden Inn Waikiki once we knew we had seats, but it will only be for one night. It does seem a little weird that we’re using the vacation destination of Hawai’i as merely an extended layover for (hopefully) further adventures across the Pacific. Tomorrow we are listed on a United flight to Guam — a flight which inexplicably has a minimum of 30-40 standbys on any given day. It is an extremely popular flight, perhaps because it is the only link between the U.S. territory of Guam and the rest of the United States. As of right now, the numbers look “ok,” but it is one of those weight-restricted things that could result in the plane leaving with empty seats.
Our arrival at the Hilton Garden Inn was met with a rather unimpressive room 850 that was isolated by itself in a narrow corridor next to a staff closet. I pulled up my booking and noted that our room description did actually include a furnished lanai and not in fact the lanai-less view of the parking lot. They got us a new room down the hall in 855 that smelled like mildew, but finally the third time was sort of a charm. We got a lanai in room 869 and a relatively lighter aroma of mildew. Getting off the 8th floor was evidently never going to happen, so we accepted this fate. For the trouble, they said they would waive the resort fee, which seemed like a bit of a scam to begin with. As actor/comedian Richard Ayoade once said, “We’re here. But should we have come?” As much as I created many memories when I lived here, it is definitely the lesser of the Hawaiian destinations. Perhaps it’s best we are here for (hopefully) just one night.
passports & pepto bismol 