Home!

The fantastic week and a half at Flynn & Maggie's (Sue's folks, for you oblivious readers) home in Anahola, Kauai finally came to and end when I arrived back home yesterday afternoon.  It was a very memorable experience!

It's good to be home, but yet--It's an empty one.  I miss my wife already.  Sue won't be home for a week or so yet.  The weather I came home to was good for our area, but falls quite a ways short of the constant 86 degrees and breezy that our rental car always seemed to have displayed on the dash.  The grass needs mowing, but fortunately that seems to be the extent of the things that need my immediate attention.

I feel like bouncing around in this blog, so forgive me.

Starting out my departure in the wee hours (sorta), I got up at 5:30 so I would have enough time to wolf down a couple of cups of coffee before leaving.  Flynn got up right after I did, and Sue right after that.  Both she and I had some trouble sleeping.  We were half way to the airport when it came to my attention that that my cell phone was still at their house on the charger.  Oh no!  Well, Suzie had hers with her so we swapped.  Now I have to get used to calling or texting my phone when I want her.  Funny thing about that.  First of all, let me say that Sue's phone has a specific ringtone attached to her parents' phones:  The television theme song from Hawaii 5-0 (you old people will remember that).  Anyway, I had just walked into the plane and was right there by the pilot's cabin where you turn to go down the aisle when it rang.  I didn't even notice it because I was intent on getting myself on board.  The stewardess standing there all of a sudden turns to the intercom console that was on the wall right there and turns a knob.

"Who turned this on?" she wondered aloud, twisting the knob.  Then she turned to me.  "Oh, it's you!" she said.  As I answered the phone (it was Suzie, making sure I had made it through all the checkpoints and traps of the airport) I overheard that stewardess telling another, "We should get that on our phones!"

I was fortunate to sit in the very back of the plane only because I was one of the first to board.  The plane was almost full by the time my "seatmates" showed up.  I had the window, and a middle-aged "new couple" sat down--He next to me.  (You could tell they were a new couple because they were holding hands and all that sickeningly sweet mushy stuff.)

This time my seat was very comfortable.  I suspect that the seats we had on the flight over that didn't recline also had different seat cushions, because they never felt right.  The seat I had coming back was totally different-feeling.  Anyway, it was a beautiful day for a plane trip.  Bright, sunny, and lots of puffy clouds with ocean visible between them.  I had my iPod on and was playing music, while I gazed outside, putting shapes to the many cloud formations that passed beneath me.

Imagine my surprise when, about an hour into the flight, a Southwest Airlines jet went zooming by us in the opposite direction!  It was slightly lower than us, but quite obviously close enough for me to see what kind of plane it was.  I'd say about 1/4 mile away or so.  Let me tell you--When two jets pass each other going 600+ mph in opposite directions, they pass FAST!  Literally, if I would have blinked I would have missed it.  That was very cool.  I could see the white contrail as it was coming out of the engines for the second it was visible.

At one point I saw a tanker far below, steaming (funny how people still say steaming... I guess dieseling sounds too stupid) along on its way toward some distant port city. It was barely visible and barely distinguishable from the clouds from our altitude.

I both love and hate window seats. A window seat affords me with plenty of opportunities for daydreaming and letting my mind go blank, but at the same time makes me feel slightly claustrophobic and uncomfortable.  The guy I was sitting next to on this flight was very fidgety--Constantly scratching, rubbing his face or head, or whatever.  At a couple points he and his girlfriend painstakingly put some sort of medicine on her hands in various places with a dropper.  It was strange-smelling stuff, and my sniffer didn't need that crap.

They didn't have the breakfast sandwich I wanted to buy when I got on the plane, so all I ate the whole day was a free cookie they gave us right after we were airborne, and later a teeny bag of a snack mix.  By the time the snack mix came around it was a little later.  I ordered a coke and let my seatmates watch me lovingly select a miniature bottle of rum from my a bag I magically produced from the seat pouch in front of me (I stored it there before they got on the plane).

Rachyl picked me up at the airport.  I thanked her profusely and we yakked all the way home.

Okay, now to backtrack.

The last day in Kauai?  We spent it getting sun of course!  We visited the cemetery where Flynn's grandmother is buried, stopped at the local Harley-Davidson dealership and laughed at the price of their t-shirts, wandered around the beach cliffs at Poipu, hit Shipwreck Beach and watched surfers wipe out , visited the Spouting Horn and listened to it's wailing moan every time a wave crashed into it's lava formation, visited Salt Pond Park (the salt ponds were dry) and just generally had a really great time.  It was a perfect end to a great, great vacation!