Hawaiian Tips #1 and 2

I just returned from a week in Hawaii. Before you turn green with envy, let me say that I took the eight-year-old with me so you should only be a slightly pale lime green color. In case you decide to travel in the near future, I'm going to give you some tips.

Tip #1. Double check your departure date. We almost arrived a day early at the airport. This was not entirely my fault. I had been up until 1:45 a.m. two weeks before trying to make travel arrangements through Orbitz to save a wad of money by purchasing our tickets on-line, only my trusty credit card people would not approve my purchase.

I'm sure a teacher at some point wronged the person in charge of security (in Texas that usually meant a football player made a 69 in math and so was ineligibe for the "big game"), so consequently no teacher was going to go to Hawaii and save some money. Or, possibly, the security person was a former teacher and knew there was no way a teacher could afford to go to Hawaii; ergo, the credit card had been stolen. Or, this purchase was not at Wal-Mart or Mcdonalds, so obviously this was not me trying to buy airline tickets.

The following morning, bleary eyed and sleep-deprived, I called my travel agent to make the tickets. I'm almost 200% sure I said departure on Thursday but ocassionaly my brain takes leave of my conscious.

At the insistence of the eight-year-old, I checked our tickets after loading the car on Wednesday for our scheduled departure on Thursday. Indeed, we were leaving on Friday. At that point my husband began drilling the eight-year-old on what to do, who to call, where to go in case of an emergency.

Tip #2 Learn to read your e-ticket. My sister, her husband, and my niece were also going to Hawaii at the same time. They were flying Air Nothing and so had warned me to bring food on the ten hour flight as there would be no food service.

Our flight was non-stop so I packed enough beef jerky, breakfast bars, cheese crackers, and Crystal Lite to sustain the entire plane should we have to land on a deserted island (one without a McDonalds). We left home at 4:59 for our 2 1/2 hour drive to the airport. McDonald's was half-way so we stopped for a big breakfast. When we arrived at the airport and had cleared security, we still had an hour before our plane left. We ate breakfast again and ordered sandwiches to go.

An hour after we boarded the plane, we were served cokes and pretzels. Two hours later the eight-year-old was starving so we ate our sandwiches. An hour later, we were served lunch, salad, turkey sandwiches, cookies. The eight-year-old was still hungry so she ate my sandwich and I ate her salad. An hour before we landed, we were served a light snack, half a sandwich, chips, and a drink.

My sister picked us up at the airport in Honolulu. The first thing she said was "We'll stop at McDonald's. I know you are starving!" "Yes!" came out of the eight-year-old's mouth, "there wasn't much to eat on the plane". I thought maybe my brain had taken another nap during the flight until I picked up the now half empty grocery sack of beef jerky, crackers, and breakfast bars to load into the car.

I pulled out my return ticket for the flight home, noted that the flight was over night, the date, and the number of meals that would be served. There would be dinner served, two snacks and drink Then I located the nearest grocery store. You never know when the plane might have to land on a deserted island or an eight-year-old might have another growing spurt.