I'm not the star of the show. These magnificent islands, from Hawaii'i to Palau, Yap, Guam, Saipan, Pohnpei, Majuro and American Samoa are what's fascinating here. For the first time I'm posting my missives to the public. Enjoy.
Part 1:
March 5, 2015, 11:01 a.m. PST, I-5N, headed to SeaTac
An omen? For the last three mornings, very early, around 4 or 4:30 I’ve awakened, looked up from our west-facing bed and gasped at the sight: an absolutely clear sky fully illuminated by a setting Moon tethered with a diamond-sharp point of light from its neighbor, Jupiter, to the right. Between me and the Moon the waters of Puget Sound shone a long lane of reflected moonlight to the west. Directly west: a clear path in the direction of where I’m headed to the mid-Pacific to Ponape in Micronesia and Osaka in Japan. The course laid is out for me, all I need to do is go.
Once again, I’m on the way to the airport. If you’ve travelled with me before, you know most of my trips start the same way, in Jay Taylor’s comfortable town car headed toward my homeport, SEA.. Our talk is limited, I need to attend to an important detail… getting a hotel room in Honolulu tonight where I crash during my 8-hour layover before heading on to Ponape. I’m not concerned making a reservation so late, I just need to find a clean, quiet place to sleep that’s near the airport.
There are a few, less than I would have thought. Lodging on Oahu is oriented toward the tourist and hotels are clustered around the over-populated Waikiki district. That’s a long expensive cab ride away and my stay is too short to make the trek worth it. I’ll arrive well after sunset; be out of there before sunrise. Besides that, except for stretch down by the zoo, near Diamondhead, Waikiki has lost all of its novelty and much of its charm. It is, a place for and of tourists, still enchantingly beautiful if you can shut out the overcrowding and the looming high rises.
I’m not being a snob, there is a reason Waikiki became so popular, but having been exposed to more remote, less developed parts of Hawaii’i, I prefer those places. But right now view is irrelevant and location near HNL is what I’m trying to find. I need a place to stay and sleep between flights. I find only three hotels by the airport, all of them relatively more expensive than those in the tourist area. Makes sense. If you are transiting the Pacific, as I am, the demand for the few available airport-proximate rooms is high. If you factor in the taxi-time and fares, the airport hotels’ convenience wins me over. Several hours from now I’ll check in at Airport Honolulu Hotel. I’m hoping its amenities are more impressive than the name.
12:37 p.m. Gate A8, SeaTac, aboard UA 6371, seat 3B, scheduled destination LAX
My need to fly United to keep adding to my total of miles requires I fly from SEA through either SFO or LAX. My repeated bad luck of SFO cancellations means I’m willing to add another hour and 500 miles to dogleg to Hawaii’i through LAX. San Francisco has become a disaster as a connection point, with delays and cancellations common at the slightest inclement weather. Any condition out of the ordinary leads runways to shut down, reducing the airport, so I’m told, to 40 per cent capacity. Worse, as incoming flights stack up, arrivals are prioritized in this order: International flights first, transcontinental second, domestic cross country third and domestic local, fourth… dead last for most of my flights destined to fly through SFO.
The extra time through LAX is worth it to reduce the doubt, stress, anxiety and general commotion associated with a getting stuck in SFO. You know my mantra, flying is all about making adjustments and declaring a personal no-fly zone through SFO is a bold one. That and last minute decision about a Honolulu hotel demonstrate a admirable, if somewhat foolhardy, ambition to control as much of my destiny as possible.
Feeling empowered, I make a capital decision, too. Facing hours of time in the air I break a self-imposed 5 year punishment for losing, first, my expensive, yet valuable, noise-canceling Bose headphones and later, their replacement, a less expensive but pretty good Panasonic earbuds I found in Japan.
Nobody does it better than Bose and I buy a new pair from their booth in the SeaTac A gates. The easiest sale the kid staffing the booth surely ever made. I took the the headphones right out of the box and put them on before boarding. Oh the bliss! Oh the comfort! The plane takes off and, lost in the soothing jazz chords of Dave Grusin’s arrangements of Bernstein’s West Side Story score, I sleep until we reach our cruising altitude.
I cannot, however, lose these puppies. To play it safe,when not in use, I drape the phones around my neck. This is not a pretty sight, leaving the impression that I have two large bulbous grey growths emanating from either side of my neck sloping into my shoulders. The black connector cord slinking down from my neck to my belt doesn’t add much to the picture. I am, however, willing to relinquish style and appearance to keep my precious headphones safe.
Maybe there’s something to be said for my bold, decisive attitude.
1:41 p.m., enroute LAX
Another bold move. I’ve taken to sampling the vast array of serialized independent television dramas that have become so popular today. Past travels have taken me on satisfying binge-watching trips across the world. I particularly remember Kathleen and I working through the whole first season of Mad Men first in Europe, through Rome, then onto South Africa and back home again. Dan Draper is the savannah is quite something to experience. So I came to know the real American west through Deadwood, followed Heisenberg and Jesse through the stunningly scary Breaking Bad and followed the twists inside the twists of other twists in the very clever spy drama, the Americans.
My most dependable critic to rely upon when searching out a new series is my son, Matthew. Maybe it’s in the genes, but he unerringly has pointed me in the direction of these and other equally entertaining and well done tele-serials. Over lunch earlier this week, with much anticipation I asked him, what I should download for this trip.
Much to my disappointment, without hesitation, he nominated Game of Thrones. I’m eclectic in my tastes, but I just don’t get much out of fantasy-science fiction. Never read the Hobbit and don’t plan to. Camelot may be just about as far as I’m likely to travel in any fictional realm. But from the Sopranos through House of Cards (just how evil can any husband and wife team be?) and, right now, another Vince Gilligan stroke of genius, Better Call Saul Matt has never steered me wrong.
So with some trepidation I’m stopping here to enter the first episode of the first season of Game of Thrones. Really?
5:25 p.m., UA 1230, seat 2E taxiing LAX, preparing to take off for HN
Well that was interesting. Game of Thrones packed a lot into its first 62 minutes. Quite well done actually. They were able to brush out some main characters quickly. I think I’m following. I’m certainly intrigued enough to try another episode. Can’t say that I like it, but given my aversion to fantasy, it’s probably saying a lot to stay in for another episode.
Bought an upgrade with miles, a wise investment at this time of the day. Smallest aircraft I’ve ever flown to HNL from the mainland, a stretched 737-800. More signs that United is shifting priorities not always to the benefit or the comfort of the flyer. I’ll take the upgrade and enjoy it.
Sun is setting as we climb out over Malibu, the hills purple in the background, a pale pink sky for a backdrop. I grew up here, right along the southern California coast. In the air, a few thousand feet above it all, the colors and clarity are all familiar. Down on the ground, however, it’s a different story. I was in LA last week on business. This place is packed. Downtown freeway traffic was notorious 40 years ago. Today, the traffic is worse. Trying to get anywhere is a nightmare, indeed, I had to abandon my effort to visit one of my client’s branch offices. I just could ‘t get there, not in a reasonable amount of time.
It saddens me to see the deterioration of southern Cal. There was, for most of the 20th Century a dreamlike quality to this place. In the space of kindergarten through colleges I saw the open space obliterated and the skies poisoned. The optimist in me hoped solutions would be found, that no more would be lost, maybe some restored. Not to be. The golden land I recall looks just as inviting from 10,000-plus feet… any lower and It’s apparent that human habitation has prevailed at the cost of nature.
Time for another episode of Thrones.
10:19 p.m., room 280, Airport Honolulu Hotel
A good start! Touchdown to tucked in bed in 50 minutes! Hotel is fine. Quiet, tidy and clean. Out on the Nimitz Highway. From the surroundings I could be in Oakland. I don’t care. I need some sleep and I want to make the most out of the ten hours I’m out of the airplane.
I’ve got to be up in six hours to catch my flight to Pohnpei, so I’ll pick this narrative up early tomorrow morning.
Aloha!
March 6, 2015, 5:38 a.m., United Club, HNL
Well the hotel turned out to be an excellent choice. Very quiet, so much so I slept soundly up to the time of my wake-up call, a rarity for me. I usually toss and turn a couple of hours before my flight. The tariff here is pricey, a buck 99 a night. I could have stayed downtown for 50 less, but the saving for the room would have been lost given the cost of a taxi from the airport and back. So if you’re looking for a no-frills layover in Honolulu, I’ve got it: the functionally named Airport Honolulu Hotel. Nothing romantic about that matchbook cover, but a more than adequate place to overnight.
Rising to the wake-up got me going a little later than planned. The free airport shuttle leaves on the half-hour and they tell you to be there 15 minutes before. No way. This is Hawaii’i, island time is real. I figure I can shower and repack the few things I have, making damned sure I don’t leave these new Sony headphones behind, and hop on the minibus with 5 or so minutes to spare. Good, efficient time management in my book.
I’m out of the room at 4:55, a little tighter than planned. The hotel is divided across two buildings and, of course, I’m in the one behind the lobby. No problem until I try to enter the main building and find the door locked. I have the key somewhere buried in my bag. I always keep them just in case the rumor I’ve heard is true, that the magnetic strip contains all sorts of private personal information. I’m not sure what I’m protecting myself against. I’m sure all my info is to be found a multiple hack lists in Russia. Indeed, we were hacked last year when the Seattle diocese failed to keep the information about it parish volunteers secure. So I know I have the key. Just where in the many pockets and crannies of my Tumi carry-on is the puzzle I’m struggling with.
The door is in the rear, but on a corner of the building. It’s 4:59. I start walking very fast around the side of the building to the front where I hope to find the jitney parked. Now, dear friends, this is what travel is all about: adjustments, making it work, always to keep heading west. This is going to be close and I don’t want to sit around the lobby for a half-hour (when I could be sitting around the airport for a half hour… go figure).
I’m energized. There is just enough physical challenge and reliance on the odds of chance to wake me up. I boom around the corner and the bus is still there, with enough red and yellow lights to qualify as a Mardi Gras float. It is, however, 40 yards away and I see what might have been the last passenger to climb aboard.
I really don’t want to yell or run. Calling attention to myself like that is really not cool. So I keep my fingers crossed. It 5:01. If I see the door close or the brake lights shine I’m calling out. 15 yards. I’m at the door. I swing up the ramp and drop in a seat to the surprise of my fellow passengers who embarked conventionally through the lobby 16 minutes ago. I suppress a smile. But I know, I won! Life is sweet! The door shuts and we shudder our way across the hotel parking lot.
7:14 a.m, UA 154, seat 21C, gate 13, HNL awaiting departure to MAJ
Nice snack while waiting at the gate to depart. Yesterday I asked my grand daughter, who is a terrific baker at 13, to make me some cookies for the flight. What a sweetheart she is. She rose early, made my cookies and, as a surprise, added some frosted cinnamon rolls. Nothing better than to start your day with a bite of love.
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