Thursday Air Travel Day

Green Bay-Austin Straubel International Airport (GRB) is a cute little airport; it looks like it is smaller than the Hawaiian Airlines interisland terminal in Honolulu. The TSA line opens up at 4:30 am; our flight was at 6 so we were there waiting at 4:27 since they tell you to arrive at the airport & start checking in 2 hours before your flight. Due to the amount of passenger traffic it looks like we could have gotten up at 4 instead of 3:30 and made it to the gate in time for boarding; even pre-check wouldn't have made it much faster. Though they might not have checked my leftovers as thoroughly if I had pre-check. TSA also thought the criss-cross back of my sports bra and the duct taped hem of my jeans were suspicious.


There are 2 concourses at GRB; we were on the A concourse which has 6 gates. The B concourse probably has the same number of gates. I started this post at GRB while sitting at Concourse A; I spent the time in Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) finishing the post about the trip from Bruce Crossing to Green Bay but didn't have any time to complete this post.


While waiting in Green Bay, Kai noticed that his GRB boarding pass said the plane would land at ORD at 7 am and his ORD boarding pass said boarding would begin at 7 am! Which sounded like he would have a difficult time making his connection; so he asked the gate agent about it. She said not to worry about it, the crew just arrived and asked her to start boarding early since they wanted to get to Chicago. When we were in the air, they also pushed it and we got there in 40 minutes. Although we had to really move to get from the Concourse B building where we arrived to the Concourse C building where his plane departed from, Kai was able to make his connecting flight.

Chicago shoreline.

Moving walkway in the tunnel under the taxiway between building B and building C.

In line for the connecting flight.

While at O'Hare I took a bathroom break in a very interesting bathroom. It had a New Age looking sink; the soap dispenser was on the left, the water faucet in the center, and the blow dryer on the right. The blow dryer also projected the word "DRY" on to the sloped surface of the sink. (I was unable to get a good photo of that.) The drain was at the lower edge and flowed off to the right.


The O'Hare Airport is so big and busy it took us about 45 minutes of taxiing after we left the gate to finally take off. In the meanwhile I saw several jets that I did not recognize; I've never seen them at the Honolulu Airport.

Traffic.

I don't know what the one on the left is; the one on the right is Etihad Airways from Abu Dhabi.

This is Iberia from Spain.

It took about 3 hours to cross the continent from Chicago to the shoreline of the West Coast; I didn't really recognize anything along the way since I have only done that trip 4 times in about as many decades. The crossing was fairly uneventful; I ate my Olive Garden leftovers for lunch, the Black Tie Cheesecake had been tipped on its side by TSA but still tasted great even though it looked terrible.

Leftovers for lunch; it was better than the hamburger I bought on the way over.

I was really hoping I would be able to see Maunalani even though I didn't have that good a seat; I was right over the wing. As it turned out, our pilot came around the south side of Leahi so I wasn't able to see anything but ocean.

Curtis picked me up from the airport; it was a good thing he didn't have the same car problems that he had the day before. When I got back home, I began unpacking and found that TSA opened my bag once again. I seem to get my bag searched at least one way each time I travel. And this time I didn't think I had anything that might look suspicious since I had no construction tools in my luggage. What seemed to set them off this time was the 2 batteries for the battery-heated vest; I had stuck them in the box with the bubble-wrapped mugs and glass maple syrup bottle.


I did a load of laundry and took a nice long shower. When I went out to hang the laundry I discovered a lot of plants had bloomed and there were several papayas that needed harvesting before the bulbuls discovered them. I had enough pakalana blossoms to make a short lei that I could use as a hatband.

Mom's last surviving orchid.

Mom's last gift orchid.

One of a dozen or so flower clusters on the pakalana vines.

The Roommates took me out to dinner at Big City Diner. While there we discovered that when I woke up in Green Bay to start the journey home it was 11:30 pm the previous night in Hawai'i! No wonder I was feeling (and sounding) tired during dinner! (This is also why this post was done on Friday instead of Thursday night.) The Roommate Who Was Learning How To Give Xander His Meds had Grandma's Stir-Fried Vegetables with a piece of chicken, The Potential Most Favorite Roommate had the Crispy Fish Burger, and I had Dad's favorite, the Hamburger Steak with Crispy Fried Onions. The names of the dishes might not be correct, I was too tired to remember everything.

Stir-Fried Vegetables with chicken.

Crispy Fish Burger.

Hamburger Steak with Crispy Fried Onions.

Kai arrived safely in Seattle, he gave Mary Ellen the coffee grinder; she sent me a photo of the coffee grinder along with the pepper mill that Kai said looked like it. I think it is only the metal mechanical parts that he was thinking about since the colors certainly didn't match.

L to R: coffee grinder, pepper mill.

This is what Mary Ellen sent to Vivian when we were in Michigan. It kinda looks like her.

Happy Birthday to Sherry & Christina!