Monday 8/2 - The Longest Day Ever

Let's say that that the weekend of July 30-August 2 wasn't one in which either Jen or I got a lot of sleep.

After we checked out of the Radisson (with a late checkout time of 1:00) and made it home with a car full of wedding loot, we spent an hour opening up wedding cards and recording what people gave us as gifts for future reference. Somehow we were able to play a softball game in Newton (hey, it was a playoff game and it was at 5:00 PM - and I went 4-for-4 and we won, so an all-around victory).

Too tired to pack but with too much to do to get the house ready for our near-two-week absence, I ended up passing out on the couch (shocking, I know) at 11 PM while Jen continued to pack around me and the TV was blasting at full volume. I didn't care, I slept right through it, until 2 AM when my alarm went off for my turn to pack.

Dubz and Allie showed up at the house at 4:30 AM for the standard Logan drop-off (as we had done the same for them for their honeymoon travel three weeks earlier) and we were at Logan at 5 AM for the 6:30 AM flight to LAX.

So after 4 hours of sleep Friday night after rehearsal dinner, 4 hours of sleep Saturday after the wedding, and 3 hours of sleep Sunday, we were headed out on United Flight 163, arriving at LAX at 9:10 AM PDT. After a quick lunch in Los Angeles, we were back out over the mighty Pacific Ocean for a 1:18 Hawaiian Standard Time arrival in Honolulu, of course also known as 7:18 PM Eastern-- a solid 14 hours from door to door, Everett to O'ahu.

There's an obvious low-brow caption here, but I'll keep it to myself.

We had the typical Hawaiian greeting with leis, made iconic by the Brady Bunch's arrival for the famous trilogy of episodes in which the Tiki idol causes Greg to wipe out surfing and Peter to cut his foot on coral, among other mishaps.

One tour guide said there are no poisonous animals in Hawaii, leading me
to believe that Bobby's possible tarantula sting was bogus.

One of the benefits of working with travel agencies is they can take care of transfers to and from the airport, so "Cousin Barry" drove us from Honolulu International to the Outrigger Waikiki on the Beach, with a crash-course in basic O'ahu geography along the way of the island's main interstate highway, H1. (Cousin Barry also explained why Hawai'i can have interstate highways-- if they called them state highways, they'd have to pay for them. Interstates are funded by Uncle Sam-- a reminder that despite my Grandpa Parker's notorious denial of the American-ness of the 50th state, Hawai'i is of course a bona fide part of the United States.)

No, that is not my last-minute escape boat I had ready to go before
the wedding; it's the view from the 14th floor, Outrigger Waikiki

Upon reaching the Outrigger, I was amazed by the hotel. What a fantastic place-- great decor, fabulously beautiful lobby with sit-down check-in service and a replica outrigger on the floor. We got set up with a 14th floor room overlooking the beach and Diamond Head crater in the distance.








I was eager to get down and jump into the mighty Pacific for the first time, even though it was 4:30 PM and I felt drunk from travel, time change, and lack of sleep. We took our first jaunt into the world's largest ocean... and suddenly Jen's eyes began to close as we were about shoulder-deep in water and she was actually snoozing in the water while standing up. Overtired much? We still had to eat, though, and get settled in the room, and who wants to waste one whole day of your vacation by falling asleep before it was even quitting time for most white collar types on the island?

So we had a quick dinner at the bar at Duke's Canoe Club downstairs in the hotel-- a great beachfront bar which also has a nicer dinner section looking out on Waikiki. Then we had to stop at one of the ultra-ubiquitous ABC Stores on Kalakaua Ave to get some flip-flops, reef shoes, a hat, some Vitamin Water Zero, a disposable water camera, and bottled water. (Alas, the wonderful ABC Store did not sell Mission tortilla wraps.)

One saving grace of Waikiki Beach is that there were a ton of jolly obese guys with much bigger guts than mine.

At 6:52 PM I wrote this journal post and looked over and saw Jen already passed out and snoring. Hey, it was almost 1 AM back at home and she'd slept for about 11 of the past 100 hours, and traveled halfway around the world. I think she earned it.