Ha! I’ll bet you thought the Mauipocolypse odyssey was over?

Not by a long shot!

I’m sure you all heard about the tsunami that hit Hawaii.

Well, this threw the entire air traffic transportation system for a loop … at least in relation to travel to & from the islands.

Obviously our flight from Maui to the mainland would be delayed … by about 5 hours. Which makes sense … since flights from the mainland to islands would probably have been delayed until the tsunami danger had passed … and it takes about 5 hours to get from the west coast to Hawaii.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8pm … we finally left at 1:50 am. Since we had such a big delay, we decided to see a movie (Avatar, for the 2nd time).

Since the flight was delayed so much, American Airlines gave us a $20 food voucher … which could be used at any participating vendor in the terminal. Unfortunately, most of the food vendors were already closed up for the night. The one vendor that was still open was in the process of shutting down their kitchen. Luckily they were willing to keep it open a bit longer for us. The salad’s that Ginny and I ordered were uninspired.

We arrived at the DFW airport around noon on Sunday. Obviously we missed our original connection from DFW to ORD. American had already rescheduled us for the next non-stop to Chicago, but we were standby … and that flight was full. Very little chance of getting on that flight.

Since we were standby, they also booked confirmed seats for us on another flight to Chicago, but that went by way of Columbus OH.

Unfortunately, since the flight to Columbus was full, we got the dregs of the seating … which means we were sitting in the last row, right next to the engine. Gads what a horrible place to sit. That absolutely HAS to be bad for your health.

We finally arrived in Columbus and had our first bit of good luck … the departing gate was right next to our arrival gate, our boarding passes were immediately available, there was a sandwich shop right across the hall from the gate, and the departure lounge had free wifi!

This was a very short flight … only about 1 hour … we arrived in O’Hare with only minor delays … and found our luggage had arrived a few hours before us. This saved some time.

We text-ed Mike, our usual cabbie, and got on the road home.

Suffice it to say, we were very happy to be home.

All in all I was pleased with the vacation … I didn’t get all the pictures I wanted, but relaxed a LOT.   The air travel left a lot to be desired.