And we're off!

Our departure for Honolulu was rather routine. Damon's mother offered to take us to the airport at 11 am. But our flight was going to be anything but routine. With 5 and a half hours to Los Angeles, a one-hour layover, and then another 5 and a half hours to Honolulu we prepared for tedium and bleak monotony like none ever before experienced by mankind. We had a carry-on dedicated for munchies, as well as a laptop holding 28 downloaded movies and a DVD player with 8 DVD movies. Bring it!

While the plane was still ascending, we realized that although the laptop with the movies was at Damon's feet, we left the headphones and the external headphone amp in the suitcase in the overhead bin. These would be necessary for maximum audio comfort. Plus we had gone through all the trouble to get the damned things, so they must be used, whether we needed them or not. The captain was taking his sweet time about turning off the "fasten seat belts" sign and the seconds were just ticking away with no entertainment! Here we were at 15,000 feet and still no movie. Ten minutes into the flight and boredom was excruciating. Damon started getting crazy. He was in the window seat while Amy was in the middle, between him and some very nice fellow named Robert, who was in the aisle seat. The "fasten seat belts sign" was still on, but When we started seeing other people getting up and around and getting stuff out of the overhead bins, we were perplexed. Is it ok now? Damon pressured Amy to go ahead and get the headphones out so we could watch the movie, and even Robert seemed encouraging. Of course, he was probably just wanting us to do what we needed to do so he could go to sleep before he lost his own mind. Amy didn't want to because the sign was still on, and even though other people got up she knew we weren't supposed to yet. Still reluctant, Amy succumbed to the peer pressure and got up with Robert to make their move - and wouldn't you know it, just as they were trying to pull the suitcase from the storage area we hit a nasty bit of turbulence. We dropped like a rock for a second, carts crashed, people fell, and the flight staff yelled for everyone to sit down. However, Amy and Robert had difficulty making it back into their seat due to a couple more impressive lunges by the aircraft. The few dips only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough to leave the interior a little disheveled. Finally the plane settled down again, and over the intercom we heard, "Stewardesses, are you ok?" Then we all got scolded for leaving our seats before they had given us the ok. Then the captain punished us further by announcing that he would be leaving the sign on longer, until he was sure we were out of the turbulence. Although Amy tried to vindicate herself by launching a series of I-told-you-so's, she still pouted like a reprimanded school girl. Well, at least we got some entertainment.

The ride was a bit bumpy after that but not bad. Robert went to sleep and we resigned ourselves to watching "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" with some tiny headphones that Damon had in his laptop case, one ear bud for each of us. That, with the subtitles, made the movie watchable. We hovered over the laptop like two starving castaways over a filet mignon in a slow cooker. After the movie ended Damon passed out and Amy talked with Robert for a while.

After a while Damon awoke and we played a game of Worms Armageddon before landing in LA.

In the LA airport Damon grabbed a bite at the Burger King and that was enough to almost make him miss the boarding period. The flight to Honolulu wasn't packed like the flight to LA. We had three seats to ourselves and most rows had empty seats. This time we had learned our lesson and kept the headphones in the laptop case! We watched "Four Weddings and a Funeral," as well as "Matrix Revolutions." Neither of them was mind-blowing, but for some reason out of the 28 highly rated (on IMDB) movies we brought we decided to watch those two instead.

On the plane we were handed agricultural forms to fill out declaring any plants or animals we were bringing in. We had a bag of baby carrots we had picked up from the grocery store to munch on during the flight. We figured it was easier to leave the bag of carrots on the plane than to go through agricultural inspections, so they were callously abandoned. One annoying part was that the airline handed out the forms but didn't bother to give us any pens. Amy and I filled them out after we landed. Luggage showed up quickly and we rolled out to the hotel bus outside.

After a brief tour of the hotel district, the shuttle dropped us off at the Outrigger Reef on Waikiki. Ahhhhh, Hawai’i. Warm fragrant breezes, flowers and lush greenery everywhere, friendly smiles... We dropped off our luggage in our little hotel room, took a few pictures of the view from our room, and proceeded out to the beach to put our feet on some sand that was farther away from home than we've ever been. Sand that collects into a little dot on the map of the U.S., surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean. Although our internal clocks were on 4am, it was only about 8pm in Honolulu, so we were going to get some sights in this evening before retiring if we had to hold each others' eyes open. *blink* We went down to the beach, played in the sand, put our feet in the water (much to Amy's relief the water was nice!!) and wandered down a few hotels to some world famous Mai Tai bar. Amy had her first authentic Hawai’ian Mai Tai and we listened to the live band for a little bit, holding defense against our heavy eyelids as long as possible. When that was finished we walked back to the hotel and crashed.