Wednesday Travel Day

Yesterday I flew to Kona with Aunty Florence, Kai flew in from Seattle, and we met Tomiko at the airport. It all started out fairly good. The Potential Most Favorite Roommate drove Aunty Florence and me to the airport, we arrived a little after 10 for a 12:10 flight. We entered the terminal and the 1st of our challenges began; we were told we needed to use the kiosks at the makai end of the terminal to print our boarding passes and bag tags. Then we were sent to the bag drop at the mauka end of the terminal, basically back to where we came from. It was the longest bag drop line I had ever seen; just as bad as a TSA line! While in the bag drop line I realized I had forgotten the pie at the kiosk! Aue! I ran back & luckily found it was still there!

Bag drop line.

When we finally dropped out bags off, we headed for the TSA line. I had TSA pre-check and there was a line right next to the bag drop; but Aunty Florence did not have pre-check. I asked the airport person monitoring the pre-check line if Aunty Florence could also go through pre-check with me rather than walking all the way to the makai end of the terminal with her bad hip. She said that Hawaiian Airlines guest services could change Aunty Florence's boarding pass to TSA pre-check, so we headed for that line. After about 10 minutes we moved to the head of the line, after another 15 minutes or so we got to the agent. It turns out Hawaiian Airlines cannot change the TSA status to pre-check! Aue!

So we headed to the regular TSA line all the way at the makai end of the terminal. It was long but at least we were on the less than 20 minutes side of the helpful sign that tells you that you are 20 minutes away from getting to the head of the TSA line. We finally got through and were able to make it to our gate by about 11; boarding was scheduled to begin in about 20 minutes.


The flight was great, I had an empty seat next to me. The pilot flew a different route than I have seen before; it was much closer to the islands than I had ever flown. We were right along the southern coast of Molokaʻi and right over Lanaʻi and Kahoʻolawe.

West end of Molokaʻi; white beach in middle is Papohaku Beach.

Deplaning went without a hitch, getting our bags was easy. The only inconvenience was that Kai's plane was now running about 20 minutes late. So I texted Tomiko to let her know; we had decided earlier that she would pick up Aunty Florence to take her to Costco in Kona, while Kai and I headed to the house via Waimea. The new plan was for me to wait in the cell phone lot for Kai, then he & I would go to Waimea to do a little shopping then head back to the house. No big deal. We picked up the Impala from the Alamo car rental and left the airport.

Things went well until we got to Waimea, when we discovered challenge #2. The bottom of Kai's backpack was wet; it turned out to be from the front passenger floor. Upon closer examination he found that there was mold along the edge of the floor mat and along the rail for the seat. I checked and found a whole lot more mold under the seat; it looked like someone had spilled something that was not cleaned up before they sent the car out again. Aue! We headed back to Kona to get another car.


We got back to Alamo and I stopped the rental agent before he scanned the car tag; I let him know we had picked the car up 2 hours earlier and were back to exchange it due to a mold problem. He started looking at the floor mat & did not seem impressed; I told him to look under the seat. That got his attention & an expletive! He sent us to get a new car; the attendant walked around the lot and came back saying what they had available for us was a Dodge Challenger and pointed it out. I explained to him that we needed a car that a disabled person could get into easily and that could fit a wheelchair in the trunk; we went to check it out and it would not be an easy task for Uncle Kazu because the seat was so low and the sides of the bucket seat wrapped around too much. But there was no other option. I called Tomiko and we discussed whether her rental car could work; it would and she was okay with transporting Uncle Kazu for lunch and Obon! So we took the Challenger.

Driving back to the house was interesting in the Challenger. It has a lot more power than any rental I have had before and a lot more power than my Outback. In fact, the only other car that was as fast was a Mazda Miata that I drove to Missoula, MT, a couple decades ago. It took hills with ease and accelerated so smoothly; I kept it in cruise control at the speed limit as much as possible so as not to attract unwanted attention. It is fun to drive!

Aunty Florence & Tomiko had bought a bunch of stuff for our meals for the few days we are here; we picked up a couple of things in Waimea also. We had a roasted chicken and salad for dinner. Kai went to bed early because he was exhausted from his travel day which started at 4 in the morning. I was tired also from having to do twice as much driving than I needed to.

As usual, I had started the day getting up an hour before sunrise, then doing my morning walk and birding along the way. I didn't see any regulars during my walk but I saw Ona & Rio and LaVie while I was doing my cool down stretches. I left immediately after I finished stretching in order to finish packing the last minute items.

Sixteen minutes before sunrise on Maunalani.

Two minutes after sunrise on Sierra.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau to Mary, Jill, and Caroline!