It's Not An Adventure Till The First Thing Goes Wrong

While most of this blog is about our trip to Myanmar, we did spend six nights in Australia and two nights in Auckland, NZ, so my next two posts will be BRIEF recounting our adventures about those two countries, before circling back for the final posts on Myanmar.

Right now, however, we are sitting on the 15th floor of a hotel in Waikiki, Honolulu, which, for the geographically challenged, is in Hawaii -- which is a long way from where we are supposed to be right now, which is home in Alexandria, VA.

But, as our friend John Passacantando likes to say, "it's not an adventure till the first thing goes wrong."

And it did.  Mercifully we are (nearly) at the end of our journey -- not the middle or, worse yet, the beginning.  About three hours out of Sydney, flying past Auckland, came a request for a medical person -- but we flew on.

Then, just east of Honolulu, came a request for someone who speaks Arabic.  Since neither Carol nor I fit that bill, we remained in our seats, fitfully watching movies and blogging.  Then came the announcement that we had to turn around and land in Honolulu.

And, because of the length of the flight, the crew would then be timed out.  So, at around 3:30am Honolulu time we found ourselves in a long line of people from the flight, waiting for cabs to dribble in to take us to our hotel, where we had to wait another 30 minutes in line to check in.

We shared a cab with a recent graduate of UNLV who played in her second pro golf tournament -- the Australian Woman's Open.  She made the cut, so she was happy if not tired.  It was a more interesting chat than I expected sharing a cab at 4:00 am in Honolulu.  I just Googled her name (hopefully that doesn't make me a creep -- so now we'll be rooting for Dana Finklestein on the LGPA.)

Anyhow, we got to bed 5am Honolulu time -- 10am EST -- so much for adjusting our body clocks.  Slept till 9am when housekeeping helpfully banged on the door to make sure we were up and going a good seven hours before our flight.

Well, it means our 22 days of travel has turned into 23 three days, and we get two free hotel nights on American's dime.  All in all, I would have rather passed!