Revisiting Hawaii

The trip to Kauai started out all wrong. My husband Al and I left the house at 9:00 am instead of 8:30 so we had no time to go back home. When we were about two miles down the road I noticed that neither of us had thought to bring camera's, film and sunglasses. Though the terrorist alert level at the airport was orange and liquids, creams, pastes and gels were prohibited, camera's and sunglasses were not yet classified as instruments of terror. " Obviously the TSA had never seen some of the snapshots that were taken of me through out my life, as had no one else but the developer because they were immediately torn into tiny pieces and eatten to prevent any hazardous viewing by the unsuspecting".

Because of this ban on liquids etc., I had to check my cosmetics bag which necessitated repacking the nylon tote and padding it with our sandals and shower shoes to shield the breakables, spillables, sprayables and squeezables then praying that there was not actually a gorilla handling the baggage that would throw it every where or that it did not get crushed by other luggage, allowing the escape of all of these varius liquids into the baggage compartment. We had purchased some beverages to drink on board but these had to be handed over to the attendant or drunk right there on the spot.

Upon entering the ticket area we discovered that the desks with many helpful agents had been replaced by rows of terminals. We went to the first terminal inserted our credit cards and found that all of these flanks of terminals were there only if you were carrying on all of your luggage. If you wanted to check your luggage there were two extremely long lines snaking out into the vast airport space. Checking the time, I remarked loudly enough to be overheard that we would miss our flight just getting through these lines. A helpful traveler pointed out the sky caps would check you in immediately and that they were just outside the door. So I took my luggage and went to one of them. Al decided to stay in the line. I got my luggage checked then went to search for Al. After walking to the gate and then back to the check-in area I found him and we rushed to get to the gate on time.