Heading to Honolulu

Oahu travelog #1
OAK Airport - Thu, 23 Dec 2021, 11am

Okay, maybe it's bold to call this "Oahu travelog #1" considering we haven't even left California yet. But the trek is afoot! Well, mostly it's a-car. We drove to OAK this morning and have only footed it from the daily lot to the check-in counter to security checks to our gate.

The weather waiting for us in Honolulu isn't earth-shatteringly beautiful. It's supposed to be cloudy most of the next 5 days that we'll be there. But this sure is a nice time not to be in California... look at all this rain in the forecast!



I've always tried to time trips to Hawaii (not that I've taken a huge number of them, like only three counting this one) when the weather there's much nicer than here. Mission Accomplished.

To Park or Lyft?

One thing that feels strange about the mechanics of this trip already is that we've parked our car in airport parking that will cost $105 by the time we return. Why spend so much money just to park? The thing is, it's the best option overall.

OAK is the most distant of the Bay Area's 3 airports from us. A ride with Lyft or Uber generally runs about $55 each way. So it's roughly the same cost, and possibly a bit cheaper, to pay for parking a car. Plus, driving our own car means two fewer Coronavirus exposure risks in close spaces. And having our own car means we're not at the mercy of driver shortages— the wait to get picked up at the airport was 30 minutes on a trip earlier this year— and the pricing surges that go along with them.

Now we'll see if our 5.5 hour flight to HNL goes as smoothly as that. It's showing on time so far.

Update: Ha ha, nope! Our flight left 40 minutes late due to a maintenance delay. But I spend the time aboard online including booking our next trip, and we arrived in Hawaii almost on time.

Booking Flights at 37,000'

Oahu travelog #2
WN 808 en route to HNL - Thu, 23 Dec 2021, 3pm*

Okay, so it's Hawaii travelog #2 and still we're not in Hawaii. But we are at least en route. There's an old saying that the journey's half the trip. It's still often that way. And before we're even there we're already planning one of our next trips. Thanks to inflight wi-fi (which I get for free with my Southwest elite status, yay!) and a 5½ hour flight time that has me casting about for things to do (after I caught up on all my news feeds) I started booking a trip for March.

In March I've got a company sales meeting in Las Vegas. Our plan now is to extend it with some leisure travel. Hawk will fly out to Vegas to join me on Friday evening after I'm done with work. We'll stay in Vegas Friday night and do something outdoorsy on Saturday. Then Saturday evening we'll fly to Amarillo, Texas.

"What's in Amarillo?" you might ask. Well, as far as I know, nothing, really. 😅 But it is just 45 minutes or so from there to Cañon Palo Duro, the "Grand Canyon of Texas". We'll spend Sunday hiking in the park there and fly home on Monday.

* I think it's 3pm. I'm not sure what timezone we're in. Or 37,000' above. 😂

Settled in, in Waikiki!

Oahu travelog #3
Waikiki, HI - Thu, 23 Dec 2021, 8pm

Our flight to Hawaii today got off to a late start, about 40 minutes delayed due to minor maintenance issues, but the actual flight time was only a hair over 5 hours so we landed almost on time. Still, 5 hours was a long flight. We covered almost the same distance as flying coast-to-coast from San Francisco to Washington, DC. I spent part of the time in the air booking our next trip at 37,000'.

We knew the flight was coming to an end when we looked out the windows and could see land.



This is a view from the cabin of Ka'Ena Point, the northwest corner of the island of Oahu. Honolulu is around to the south; that's the far right of the island as seen in the picture above.

The geographically astute might be wondering why a flight from San Francisco, which is well east of Oahu, loops around the northwest side of the island, and doubles back southeast to Honolulu. If you truly earned your gold star in geography, you'd know it's because the trade winds do a funny backward loop around Oahu. Ships from the west sail in around the east, and flights from the east loop around the west. (Sea ships want to travel with the wind, while aircraft on landing want to fly into it.)



This garden picture (above) is not from our hotel. The garden is at the airport! And it's not even outdoors. I mean, it is outdoors, but there's no door to it. This section of the airport is open to the air. HNL is probably the prettiest airport in the US.

If you noticed the garden looks Japanese, you're right. There are a lot of Japanese styles to things around Honolulu. As we were driving from the airport in to Waikiki, Hawk and I both remarked that the cityscape around us looked very Asian. Except for all the American cars and Hawaii license plates we could've believed we were driving in Japan, South Korea, China, or Taiwan.



The process of getting to our hotel room involve a number of small ignominies. I'll skip writing about them because we relaxed quickly once we where there. Or here, for the next 5 days.



Home sweet home. ...Well, for 5 days anyway.