After just a couple weeks hiatus from the nonrev life, we (Bricole, everyone’s favorite celebrity couple) are back at it. This time it is a gathering of celebrity couples. You all remember Salt, everyone’s favorite senior travel couple, and of course Bran, the lesser-known Texans with their keikis in tow. This particular weekend has historically not been good for standby travel as many like to travel during the long weekend for Indigenous People’s Day. It was this exact weekend four years ago, that we attempted about six different flights to any Hawaiian island before ultimately giving up and going home.
Today we fared a bit better, but only just. We were all supposed to meet in Honolulu, but despite the dozen or more direct flights there out of LAX, we wouldn’t have gotten seats on any of them. Instead, we took the next best thing — a flight to Maui. That, for whatever reason, had about 40 seats. It was not without its own minor stresses. After a fairly seamless trip through Terminal 2/3 security, I opened the Delta app to see that our plane was at gate 131 in the international terminal. While uncommon, it’s not unheard of. After all, we took LATAM a month ago from the Delta gates so it seemed plausible enough that there would be a shuffling of gates. When arriving at gate 131, we did find a Delta plane, but it was an A350 bound for Atlanta. We also received notifications on our phones that boarding was happening for our flight at gate 25A back from where we came. Oy.
We arrived at 25A to find the correct aircraft and destination. We were notified of receiving seats 40A/B as we walked up to the gate. We had the two-person row to ourselves on the 767-300ER with no one in front of us to threaten a recline. We were possibly the last to board and we departed just a bit later. We were airborne just slightly ahead of Bran and the keikis who had departed San Francisco. The race was on.
We arrived (rather firmly) at Maui’s Kahului airport where we quickly hustled our way past virtually the entire length of the terminal to gate 19 to catch a Hawaiian flight on an old 717 to Honolulu. The plane pushed shortly after we took our seats. We were airborne within 25 minutes of landing from our previous flight. It was a short hop over to HNL, but I still got served a POG juice. Such things take me back to a simpler time and I’m surprised they’re still doing that kind of service on such short flights. After the quick flight, we hopped in a Lyft and made our way to the Outrigger Reef Hotel.
The efficiency at which we made our way between multiple airports and transfers seemed to be in vain as we then waited in the hotel’s lobby for about two hours awaiting an available room. During this time I doordashed us some L&L (Hawaiian Plate Lunch) in the form of loco moco. I don’t know if it’s because we have easy access to L&L in Los Angeles as well, but it didn’t hit the spot as it once did circa 2006. Finally, just before 3pm, we had access to our room albeit a bit grumpy from waiting and the fact that Nicole has taken ill from the myriad of sick people that walk among us.
After going to Long’s Drugs to acquire some medicines for Nicole, we went to the Voyager 47 Club, the Outrigger Reef’s equivalent to Priority Pass — and a perk to all platinum members of the Outrigger brand. It goes without saying that we celebrity couples would have access to such a club. From the tales of Salt, this club has acquired something of a mythical status. “You could make a dinner out of their appetizers!,” was once said. This is not inherently true, but bless them for trying to give those spring rolls and banana loaf an elevated status. After the sun went down, Nicole and I retired to the lanai for a spell to regroup before ordering a disappointingly small margherita pizza from the resident MonkeyPod restaurant.
Then Salt and half of Bran went for a lengthy walk down the entire length of Waikiki. We (Bricole, everyone’s favorite celebrity couple) attempted to rendezvous with them, but didn’t catch up with them until reaching Kapiolani Park. After our return, we checked to see if we could possibly change rooms as we are in an adjoining room next to very young (and rather loud and shrill) children. Children, mind you, that are probably not on this time zone and likely to be up at 4am or earlier. The front desk told us they were checking out tomorrow, so we will try to make do. Nicole has ear plugs at the ready. After collecting some gifted chocolate macadamia nuts from Salt, we settled in for the night and prayed for some decent sleep.
