Hawaii May 2005

By Jon Konrath

It's 7:25 EST and I'm on my way. We left ATL at 3:30 for a ten hour and twenty-some minute direct flight to HNL, which means I've still got another six hours to go. Oh boy...

The basics for this trip were the same as last time, but a bit extended: I got six nights in Oahu in a Delta package vacation, plus a rented car and a handful of useless coupons that I'd never need, nevermind that a huckster on every streetcorner and hotel lobby would be passing out a better value pack for me to read once and then throw out. This trip, there would be some new sights, since I actually took more than two seconds to plan things, and last time I only had four nights, which barely gave me time to get my feet wet.

And of course, this trip would have new gear. This is the inaugural trip for my new Fuji S3100 digital camera, replacing my old Olympus one-megapixel that's been to hell and back with me since 2000. I've got my new Toshiba Portege Tablet PC, which went with me to Vegas in January, and is now developing sporadic keyboard problems as I use it for actual writing for the first time. I also picked up one of those extended-trip external batteries. Of course, it didn't work as advertised, which is why I did a lot of my writing on paper for the final leg of the outbound trip. The battery has male and female plug adapters that can swap out for a variety of laptops and accessories. The whole mess plugs in serially between the laptop and AC adapter. It's rated for something like five hours, but I got about four. The power management mojo on my laptop assumed I was on AC power since it had something plugged in that hole, and ran everything at wide-open settings, draining the battery faster. I could have selected a lower setting, and I did for part of the trip, but I forgot, given that it wasn't automatic. I also spent a lot of time playing Sim City 4, which is an all-out full-screen graphics beast, using more juice. Also factor in that I probably didn't charge the new battery enough. The second it hit four bars, I was like "done! let's get the fuck out of here!", when it probably needed an hour or ten for some kind of deep conditioning therapy or whatever.

The trip out was quieter than usual. I overpacked two carry-on bags - my old computer laptop backpack, and a new Ogio messenger laptop bag - and the whole trip out was a massive exercise in juggling gear between the two bags. I packed with everything in the optimal pockets for transit. But when I got on the plane, I wanted the essentials in one bag for under the seat, and the not-so-essential in the other bag for overhead. That meant moving the laptop, shifting the magazines, putting stuff in my pockets or the seat pocket or my lap or whatever else. Tedious.

There are only a couple of other things to note about the trip to Atlanta, my jumping-off point. First, I saw a vending machine that sold iPods and network cards. That would make much more sense if there was actually WiFi in the Atlanta airport, so you could fill that thing up with iTunes songs before you leave. Second, the media on all of the airport TVs were at a fever pitch about this missing woman who was supposed to be married a few days later. It was a full-on amber/white/red alert or whatever, and of course, the cynic in me immediately said, "she's probably in Vegas sucking someone's dick right now", not that she was dead in the desert or whatever. By the time I arrived in Hawaii, she was found alive and well, and had suddenly earned the moniker "The Runaway Bride". Seriously, when are people going to learn to actually listen to me? I should be making money off of my forecasts like this. I can predict the future better than Rainman can do long division. Anyway.

For the big leap, the plane was only at about half capacity, which meant I got to shift to a middle row/middle seat of the 767 and leech the two surrounding seats for all of my junk. I was originally seated in the aisle of the right row, next to a kid from Puerto Rico shuttling back to the islands for his Army duty, working on helicopters. He had a bad trip - from PR to Atlanta to Norfolk to Atlanta again and then to Honolulu. Why the weird flight plan, which would take him about 48 hours? That's the Army. Don't trust them to book your next vacation, I guess.

Right before I left, my girlfriend Sarah gave me a bag of stuff for the trip, including sunscreen, gum, a waterproof camera, some other toiletries and food, and a half-dozen magazines. I read all of them cover to cover on the long-as-hell flight, even Spin's issue with Trent Reznor on the cover. ("I'm so jaded and moody! Buy my album! I was in rehab or something! I look like Steve Perry!") I found that all of the magazines were filled with post-its of Sarah's various notes and annotations to me, so it was fun to read all of those as I flipped through FHM and Cargo and all of the others.

We got a real meal on the plane, or at least as real as airplane food is. That's a change from all of my usual three-hour jumps that barely give you a dixie cup of Coke and a foil pack of three mini-pretzels. We actually got a meal plus later a sandwich plate, and about 3 or 4 beverage rounds. That didn't do enough to keep me hydrated; I think I drank about a dozen tiny single-serve Dasanis and still felt mummified by the time we landed.

One of the flight attendants looked like John Locke from Lost's younger brother, except with hair. He even had the same smile. It really fucking freaked me out; I was about ready to ask him if he checked in a case of knives so we could hunt for wild boar in case we crashed. It's even more strange considering Lost is actually filmed in Oahu.

There were three movies, of which I watched about ten minutes total. First was National Treasure, which looked like a total piece of shit, and I completely ignored it. Second was Sideways, which it seemed like everyone liked, but then everyone also liked As Good as it Gets and Pay it Forward and I bet everyone liked Nazi death camps when they first came out, and we all know how that ended. I watched a few minutes of Sideways, but didn't really get into it. It seemed to be one of those "makes you think you're thinking" movies, and I didn't buy it. Oh well. Third movie was Ladder 49 aka Backdraft Redux. John Travolta plays one of his three characters, and Joaquin Phoenix says about six different words as a fireman who may or may not be mentally retarded, I didn't watch the whole thing. I think the fire sequences were actually filmed on the Backdraft ride at Universal Studios. Add in a bunch of "remember our fallen heroes" post-9/11 sentiment, and I'm sure the producers made back their investment. Not a great movie to watch on a plane, though.

We got to the airport at about 2:00 AM, also known as 8:00 PM local time. My luggage was waiting when I got off the ramp, and it took about two seconds to get to an Avis bus. A minute later and they had my car, which was a four-door Chevy Aveo. It's the smallest, shittiest, ugliest, tiniest car I've ever seen. It's so small, you could tow one of them with a Geo Metro. The dashboard is made of two digital watches next to each other. I got out of the rental car lot, turned onto the Nimitz highway, which was a mistake, and then drove around semi-lost but certain I knew where I was. I had a map that was actually one of those free books of coupons with a series of tiny maps starting on page 47 and I kept shutting it and having to reopen it and find page 47 in the dark while driving. And did I mention that, like an idiot, I forgot to go to the bathroom in the airport and this whole maneuver was a race against the bladder clock?

I found the hotel without great difficulty, but the parking lot system was arbitrarily confusing, the lot was allegedly full, and the attendant basically explained it in a series of 47 conflicting terms that made no sense whatsoever. I was looking for "take a ticket, park, check in" and instead got "ramp to the full up the plus to the voucher in the H21 for the key into the sticker off the overflow to the blacka blacka" and so on. I desperately needed to sleep, take a piss, get out of the car, maybe not in that order. I told the attendant I hadn't slept in two days and he was making no sense and I just wanted to check in, and if he was going to tow my car, fine, I'd pay the $300 just to get my damn room key and use the restroom. He let me triple-park for two minutes until I could use the restroom and get my key, and by the time I got back, the lot was not-full, so that worked.

I got my key, dumped off my car, and headed inside. My room was on the 31st floor of the 44-floor highrise. I then learned the fatal flaw of my lodging: I would spend half of my vacation waiting for a damn elevator. I used the time waiting to buy a Coke from an overpriced machine (still cheaper than NY price) and then got to the 31st floor.

I didn't expect a big Elvis suite, but I did expect my upgrade to kitchenette to have, well, a kitchenette. Instead, I found a room about as big as a single-single dorm room. It was about a square foot bigger than my place last time, but that isn't saying much. It did come with a dorm fridge that makes ice, handy for buying water and Cokes in bulk at ABC and drinking them on demand instead of paying a buck for an 8-oz Dasani from the Coke machine 29 floors down. Best of all, the room had a set of windows looking south toward the beach, with no obstructions from taller buildings. I couldn't see much in the dark, but I knew it would be great during the day.

I cranked the window AC, did more luggage shuffle to unpack a few things in the room, then got wound down and finally crashed just before midnight.